Days at DÔEN - An Alumni Spotlight on Isabel Galvan

For this week’s Alumni spotlight we are highlighting the one Isabel Galvan. Isabel graduated from Auburn in 2022 where she then moved to California. Today, she works for DÔEN in Van Nuys, CA. At DÔEN, Isabel serves as a product development and production intern. After beginning the internship in January, she was offered an extension until the end of September and now works with the design director 3 days a week.

The main description of a product development intern at DÔEN is someone who helps to source fabric, knits, buttons, trims, and laces from vendors located in countries such as India, Turkey, Hong Kong, Portugal, and Peru. Below are some of the tasks Isabel gets to complete on a day-to-day basis in California;

· Organizing and managing prototypes, PP, and all related samples

· Checking in photoshoot samples

· Organizing line sheet orders

· Sending out swatches, reference samples, and buttons/trims to various vendors

· Helped to create product boards

· Spec TOPs

· Pulling Pantone colors

· Maintaining development WIP

Vintage references sourced from Paris

There is a lot of work that goes into making DÔEN the successful business it is today. As the company has taken a recent surge in the past’s years, Isabel tells us the most challenging part of this internship is the growing curve the company has experienced in the last year. When things start to pick up and move quicker, it is often hard to keep up. This delay can often cause organization to be off at times. While this is ultimate great for business, it does make for more work.

Isabel also explained that one of her favorite parts of the job is the people and their willingness to help her grow. In January, Isabel started as a product development intern but was very vocal with the team on how she really wanted to get back in touch with her design side. The team heard her goals and started helping her on a path to achieve them which led her to where she is now— assisting their design director.

In her position of assisting DÔEN’s design director, Isabel in in charge of their product knowledge deck! This means that for each delivery per season there is a PowerPoint that includes the most recent fit picture, a reference/inspiration image, bulk fabric submits, the construction of each garment, and then the key details of the garment. After that process, she helps to host the meeting to present their work.

Another project Isabel is working on is a flash mob fashion show for the brand Season Jo De. For this project, Isabel is designing on a team of 5 designers for a July fashion show hosted at the board museum. The designs are intended to be minimal. They want to be able to create a story personal to everyone that is watching the show. To cover this, the focus statement of the collection is, “when I was a kid I wanted to be __.” This is to help influence both the younger and older generations, helping to draw influence on everyone and not a specific demographic.

Below is a video file of the work in progress for the Season Jo De fashion show mentioned above.