A girl's dream job

Being paid to shop sounds like a glam way to earn your keep. Carolyn Enting talks to a professional shopper about her job and finds out how she rates what Wellington designers and shops have to offer.

When Alex Thompson tells people what she does for a living most assume she invented her title. In fact it is real Thompson is shopping editor for a glossy fashion magazine.

This month she visited the capital and is now ready to endorse Wellington as deserving of a place on the world shopping map.

Wellington won over Thompson, 24, who works for Shop Til You Drop.

"I'll definitely be recommending Wellington as an alternative shopping destination to Melbourne for a Sydney-sider. It's perfect because everything is within walking distance, so accessible, and the food is incredible," she says. "It is also great for boutique shopping, there is a real eclectic mix, and people are really friendly. It is not like Sydney where you are treated as a leper when you walk into a store."

It's a view shared by Qantas's The Australian Way magazine, which has named Wellington one of the world's top nine shopping destinations alongside Paris, Berlin and New York in its latest issue.

Cuba St is high on Thompson's recommendation list. She also gives Alexandra Owen's new store on Wakefield St the big thumbs up, and rates Karen Walker.

Rather than shopping up a storm in Wellington, however, she limited her personal purchases to a necklace from Hunters & Collectors. She'll leave the shopping to her readers.

Shop, as she calls it, is a fashion magazine "dedicated to shopping". It presents the latest fashions just as they are about to hit the stores, focuses on shopping smart, and caters for all ages and price ranges.

"There is so much product in the magazine that there is always something in there to appeal to someone, from Sportsgirl to Marni, which is probably why the magazine is still growing, even with everything going on in the world at the moment with the recession. If you buy Vogue you can look at the beautiful pieces but you can't find that awesome $50 top," she says.

It is Thompson's job to find these gems. The hitch is that she needs to find all the stuff well in advance of it hitting the shop floor she is currently working on the magazine's August issue. So instead of trawling the shops, as her title suggests, most of Thompson's time is spent in showrooms being shown various ranges of clothing and accessories shoes, handbags, belts, jewellery, and headwear.

"What we do is the legwork sourcing and selecting the best of what is out there. A huge chunk of our time is spent going to showings, and then shooting it and doing all the boring production things," she says.

The March issue featured 427 accessories and the project nearly drove her "insane". Sourcing that number of accessories was a massive job; the items chosen were then photographed over two days in a studio.

"You can dress cool and have an eye for cool things but you need to be so organised in this job. The deadlines never go away and it's non-stop. Captioning is the most tedious part. You need to make sure you have the right price, size range, and be sure of when something is available. There is a lot of crossing the t's and dotting the i's. If things are unavailable readers get really stroppy about it."

When it comes to buying for herself, she usually does this in the showroom too when she is previewing a range. One of the perks of the job is the opportunity to buy clothing and accessories at wholesale prices, so she tends to spend her money then "because it's worth it". A recent acquisition was a cobalt blue Karen Walker jacket. "Karen Walker is pretty much my favourite designer, I practically only own Karen Walker," she says.

Thompson admits she doesn't have much patience for shop shopping, especially with other people, and when she does shop she doesn't even try things on. She has the advantage of knowing what something will look like on her when she picks it up because of her pattern making training. Before working in magazines she trained for four years in fashion design in Sydney, then decided fashion design wasn't for her and that she'd rather be a stylist.

"I know if I like something or not, and I know what I would wear. I shop quickly and I don't have the patience for other people so I probably won't have a future career as a personal shopper," she says.

As for the job, she loves it, though it would probably be a cure for shopaholics.

"You see so much that you become quite numb to things, it is just more things, then you get those collections that you get revived by, but sometimes it's just things."

She got her break in the fashion industry, where jobs are few and jealously guarded, after "interning for free" for Madison magazine. She then worked at Style and The Australian Women's Weekly before landing the role of shopping editor in September.

"If I ever tell a man what I do he says, `My wife should have that job,"' she says. "That is always their joke."

- © Fairfax NZ News