{"id":1259,"date":"2015-11-18T14:08:28","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T14:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mub.eps.manchester.ac.uk\/uommaterialsblog\/?p=1259"},"modified":"2018-05-22T16:45:17","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T15:45:17","slug":"after-uni-with-inthefrows-victoria-magrath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mub.eps.manchester.ac.uk\/uommaterialsblog\/after-uni-with-inthefrows-victoria-magrath\/","title":{"rendered":"After Uni with InTheFrow’s Victoria Magrath"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello everyone. We have a pretty exciting treat for you all today! It’s\u00a0an ‘After Uni’ post with none other than Victoria Magrath, the creator of InTheFrow<\/a>.<\/p>\n

InTheFrow began as a blog and, in Victoria’s own words, ‘a hobby’. These days, with nearly 80,000 Twitter<\/a> followers, \u00a0390,000 subscribers on YouTube<\/a>, and 571,000 followers on Instagram<\/a>, \u00a0it has become a fashion and lifestyle brand. Through a huge amount of hard work, Victoria has forged an exciting and ever-evolving career which is going from strength to strength!<\/p>\n

\"Victoria's
Victoria’s most recent Instagram photo, taken from her blog post about self confidence. There’s a link to the post later in this post.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But before all of this, Victoria could be spotted in the classrooms and hallways here at the School of Materials<\/a>. I first heard her name when looking through some old footage on the School website. A colleague tapped me on the shoulder and told me that Victoria was a blogger now, and was doing pretty well indeed. ‘You should get an interview with her’, they said. I thought that was pretty unrealistic at the time. But, a few months later, and with the help of a name that is becoming very familiar on this blog (Delia Vazquez<\/a>), I sat down for a chat with one of our most recognisable alumni. And she has even been kind enough to let us include some of the fantastic work she does in the blog post\u00a0– all photos are from her Instagram and you can find the videos used, and many more, on her YouTube.<\/p>\n

Anyway, that’s enough from me. Let’s get down to the reason you’re here:<\/p>\n

Hi Victoria. Thanks so much for chatting to us. Can we start by going back to your time in the School of Materials? Can you tell us a bit about the journey you went through here?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Yeah, okay. So I think it was 2007 when I started and I did the Design Management and Fashion Retailing course, which is just Fashion Retail<\/a>\u00a0now I think. It’s a bit of a branch between marketing and retailing. It was really, really good, and I really enjoyed the more kind of CAD (computer aided design) side of it, because I really enjoyed promotional design and graphic design. Yeah, so I did that for the three years.<\/p>\n

And then the opportunity came up to do the PhD. It was kind of at a time when I was at a crossroads, thinking \u2018do I stay in Manchester and get a job or do I go to London and get a job?\u2019 And then Helen McCormick<\/a> said \u2018we\u2019re looking for someone to do a PhD if anyone\u2019s interested\u2019. So I went and spoke with her and luckily I got the role. So I then did that for three years. Again it was amazing and I learnt loads. About marketing, consumer behaviours, and how people respond towards fashion, fashion apps, and fashion websites.<\/p>\n

So after that I became a lecturer. I was a lecturer in Fashion Retail here for a year and a half. I generally taught more digital marketing and fashion marketing. I really, really enjoyed that, but then at the same time I had started my blog about halfway through the second year of my PhD. At the beginning it was quite slow and quite steady, but towards the third year of my PhD and onto my first year of lecturing it became a bit busy and started getting very hectic. I also signed to my management agency then, too. So things got a lot bigger than I ever expected them to.<\/p>\n

So in the end I had to leave the lecturing. It was either the lecturing or the blog and I decided I wanted to see where the blog would take me.<\/p>\n

\"Victoria
Victoria looking amazing on graduation day here at the School of Materials, University of Manchester<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Well as much as it was a shame for us to lose you, it looks like the blog has taken you to some pretty great\u00a0<\/strong>places. But if you could pick a couple of favourite memories from your time here, what would they be?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Graduating from my PhD<\/a> was obviously a fantastic memory. It was great having all the staff there to support me. It was almost like a send-off because it was just a few weeks before I left, so it was like a big goodbye kind of thing. Obviously graduating from my undergraduate was amazing too, with all my friends. That was a great experience.<\/p>\n

Some of the trips that I did here, too. I went to Paris with some of the staff to get involved in a trade show called Premiere Vision<\/a>. A couple of us went to that and it was really a great little weekend, a great experience.<\/p>\n

And some good memories are just from teaching the students. Especially when I was helping in some of the CAD classes, you know. The graphic design. It was just a really nice moment when you saw a student completely get it finally, and sort of be like \u2018I get this software now and I see what you\u2019ve been teaching me\u2019. And then they\u2019re creating amazing work from it. That\u2019s a brilliant moment.<\/p>\n

Yeah, they\u2019re all really amazing moments that I\u2019ll always keep with me.<\/p>\n

And how, in your own words, would you describe what you do today? Can you give us a brief outline of your current career?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Yeah, so I would describe myself as a fashion lifestyle blogger. I say blogger first and foremost, but I am also a YouTuber. But it\u2019s the blog that I started with and I feel like that\u2019s kind of the grounding of everything. I do the YouTube alongside that, rather than the blog alongside the YouTube. It\u2019s been like three years that I\u2019ve been writing the blog, so I\u2019ve put a lot of time into that and a lot of hard work.<\/p>\n

So yeah, I\u2019d say\u00a0I’m\u00a0a fashion lifestyle blogger.<\/p>\n