Help me decide!

Wow, that sounds so odd to me! Here in the US working retail is what you do when you're or a teenager or in school. It is just a minimum wage job unless you work at a high end department store and get a percentage of your sales.

@BabyJ Lucky! no but seriously, that sounds weird to me! Haha! If you get a retail work here, you've got everything sorted. I remember that a girl in my school wanted to work at H&M so bad that she had it as a life time goal. (she was a bit too obsessed, but still!)

Maybe you could land an (abroad) internship somehow, by the school you graduated from? I'm from Finland and our countries have their similarities, everybody wants those sweet free employees. It won't give you a lot of cash, but it will give you experience. There are all kinds of arrangements how you get a small payment but still can land a pretty good job, you know, just get associated with your local labor office. If you're under 25 or something there's an aid the government gives to the entrepreneur if they hire you, in order for them to pay your wage. Since we do things after you Swedish people I'm pretty sure you have that possibility there too :P

But if you just keep trying every single place you could possibly see yourself working in, I think one will eventually catch. That's how you have to do it, have patience. It helps if you're active in social media, have blog or even have a Linkedin page or something like that. Also, you can always became an entrepreneur yourself. It's not all bad.

And agree on those retail places, I have over two years of experience from customer service, for example, and nobody hires me anyway. You need contacts to get employed. Cv means nothing even if you've been working since you were 14... That's what you get when you live in a city with stupendous amount of young jobless people...

The trouble with the UK is that for getting into the fashion scene you really need to be in London (according to my friend who is a knitwear designer) but you would really struggle to live on a retail assistant's wage there.

If you just fancy a change of scenery then I would recommend Edinburgh as a place to check out. It has a nice atmosphere, a good arts scene, good night life, not too big but big enough that you don't run into the same people all the time and you'll probably find the weather ok. It doesn't get much below about -6 in winter.

I studied fashion design in the U.S. And have an aa degree, I worked in retail without the degree, and could still but can't find any jobs in the design industry it's a very difficult and competitive market here

If you want to come to the UK, there are apprenticeships that you can do which are basically paid training, you work about 4 days a week and 1 day you go to college to get a qualification. Employers like it because it's cheaper than paying someone minimum wage and apprentices like it because it's easier than getting a job and you get a qualification. There are loads of retail opportunities and they can last 1 year or 2 years. The pay isn't great, but you can get about £200 a week on it.