photo by KL - taken in the meatpacking district, NYC
August 11, 2010 Dear Diary...
Coming to New York!
I had just graduated from URI, University of Rhode Island, and had packed up my little house that I shared with my two roommates and jammed all my things in my beat up gray Honda Accord. I was on my way...
The drive down to New York went by faster than it ever had on my usual weekend trips to the city... because this time I was moving there.
Coming to New York City was so exciting... I had been there countless times before, almost every weekend, to visit my boyfriend who lived there and had graduated a year before me. We started out living in a one bedroom apartment in Bay Ridge, in one of the nicer areas of Brooklyn. I knew very little about decorating at that time, but made the most of the space and made a cozy home for us there. I remember vividly going to Bloomingdales to buy my first sofa. I laugh at it now.. because I would never ever buy that kind of sofa again.. arm-rests way too big and generally way out of proportion... but it was so comfortable. The next big purchase was the bedroom set which we bought at some funky futon place in the village and even though I thought it was great then..I never would have bought that today. Times change and styles and taste change with it... thank God.
I had always loved design and decorating, but even though I knew that´s what I wanted to do with my life, I figured it was safer to start applying for jobs in the field that I had a degree in. I had never been super fashionable.. never really had the trendiest clothes or the best makeup brands, but it appealed to me and I thought it would be fun to work for a company that marketed those type of products. So I applied to Revlon, LÓreal and similar huge corporations where I could put my marketing skills to use.. and maybe enjoy the New York corporate environment.
After several interviews and starting to realize that marketing wasn´t at all what I wanted to do, I took a shot in the dark and began looking for jobs that had to do with interior design. Magazines, Interior Design firms and anywhere I could just get a foot in the door since I had no experience or background in the field.
One day I had an interview with some mossy old firm in Midtown and was shown their portfolio which appeared to not have been updated since the 70´s. I was ready to give up, even though I had another interview with a small firm the next day. I had gotten the names of these places from the yellow pages ( I had no clue who was who in the design world at that time) and I thought the next place would be just another wannabe design firm with pointless projects and horrific taste.
With (a lot) of convincing by my boyfriend to just do one more interview... I went to 58th Street on the corner of 6th avenue for my first interview with Brian J. McCarthy Inc.
I have a lot to thank my ex-boyfriend for... and pushing me to not give up and to go to see this firm is definitely one of them.
That interview changed my life! One month later, I was hired and starting my very first day... as Design Assistant!
xoxo,
Kristina
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