You can feel seasons changing all the way back in mid-August. There’s a sense that the best of summer is behind you and the world is beginning to change colour.
September is now in full swing, and it has brought with it the most beautiful weekend here in London despite it marking the start of autumn. It was the same weekend that I moved to the UK 13 years ago and spent some time walking through South Kensington, watching people enjoying the sun and driving down King’s Road in Mini convertibles. It gave me a sense of how much Londoners like to make the most of good weather.
This past weekend has also reminded me of an Indian summer-like September I spent in New York nine years ago admiring the lampposts outside Midtown brownstones, the sunsets over the East River and learning to settle in the city for a while.
Deciding to pick up my life from Bucharest and relocate to the UK for school, work and set up a separate life altogether by myself simply because I’ve always liked being abroad and seeing the world has been the journey of a lifetime. My mom has recently made it sound like I’d hasted into looking for new horizons outside of my home country, but I don’t think she’s ever understood how ingrained and always rumbling that need for change and shift towards something else has always been in me.
+10 years of something feels like a good moment to look back at how things have progressed. I’ve got a smile in my mind about receiving my right to work back in the day when Romanian nationals needed work permits to get a job in the UK. Heading out to New York for a work secondment nine years ago and getting further intoxicated by the proverbial New York City bug. It’s never left me, and it’s been asking for its pound of flesh every year since.
Coming out of the pandemic like many others and buying my home in North London a couple of years later. Thinking of the work that I have done throughout the time, that I have either led or been a part of with different agency and client teams. My mom also says that I should frown a little less sometimes, but I suppose the challenges encountered along the way have left a nag.
+10 years of something feels like a good moment to think about what else you’d like to see coming down the pipe and while things may evolve and grow, I do not see how they’ll never not include my life in London and the type of work that I have been doing so far.
What I will try to do more of moving forward is write – it’s always been a more natural, comfortable and willing medium to me than speaking despite the training I have got in public communications along the way. I’ll write about work and not just only, to filter out my own insights out of various situations, share perspectives and – stay in touch.
And because what I do is work in branding, and Septembers have always been about evolution, what better moniker than Johnnie Walker to capture the charm of Indian summers and mood of this exciting journey. I have ever only had a tangential studio relationship with the Johnnie Walker striding man, but I have always admired the effort and craft this brand has undertaken to evolve and continue to grow.
Read, and dare I say, even follow to stay in touch.
Unmistakably,
Irina.
Irina Gheorghe 
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