LCF Grad Futures: How I became a Buying Admin Assistant at M&S

This session is only for London College of Fashion students and graduates. It is aligned to your Graduate Futures careers and employability journey.

M&S are renowned for being an inclusive, dynamic, exciting, and ever evolving business built on doing the right thing and bringing exceptional quality, value, and service to every customer, whenever, wherever and however they want to shop with them.

During this insightful webinar you’ll hear how Mary Wilson has navigated her career since graduating from LCF’s Postgraduate Certificate in Buying and Merchandising. She’ll share tips on how she approached applying for jobs and preparing for interviews and offer insight into the key skills and behaviours required to progress and succeed in a fast-moving, transformational environment.

M&S considers it’s Buyers to be the best in the business, so join this online session to learn more about the world of fashion buying and life inside one of the UK’s most cherished retailers and ask questions directly to an LCF Alumni.

Speakers

• Melanie Mitchell, Graduate Futures Consultant (Careers), London College of Fashion:Leveraging over 20 years of experience as a Buyer, Headhunter and now Consultant, Melanie has worked with a number of brands including Christian Louboutin, Vivienne Westwood, AllSaints, Threads Styling and Sweaty Betty on projects relating to talent acquisition and executive search. Passionate about helping to build both brands and careers through putting the right people, in the right place at the right time she continues to use her industry expertise to coach and inspire the next generation looking to pursue careers in fashion.
• Mary Wilson, Buying Admin Assistant at M&S: Mary completed her Postgraduate Certificate in Buying and Merchandising at London College of Fashion in 2024 before joining Boden as a Buyers’ Administrative Assistant. Since June 2025, she has worked at Marks & Spencer as an Advanced Level Buyers’ Administrator within the Jaeger Womenswear team, providing vital administrative support, owning the critical path and ensuring accurate, on-time product set-up.

Useful resources

In this webinar, you will develop the key skills of enterprise, connectivity, proactivity and curiosity as defined by the UAL Creative Attributes Framework (My_CAF). Before attending this activity, we suggest you:

• Check out our Careers Padlet

If there are any barriers to your participation in this event or you have access requirements you wish to discuss, please contact graduate.futures@fashion.arts.ac.uk in advance, we'd be happy to talk with you. If you can't sign-up as the tickets have run out or expired, please email and see if you are still able to attend.

Image credit: LCF Careers Fair 2025. Image by Paul Cochrane