My Love for Stacey Dooley and Feminism

Stacey Dooley has always been my favourite presenter, she is down to earth and always gets completely involved in the topics that she investigates. Alongside fashion, I am also very passionate about feminism and the way that women can be portrayed and objectified. Recently Stacey Dooley has been documenting issues around the world that put women and young girls at risk, purely down to their gender. The second documentary ‘Stacey Dooley investigates - The World’s Worst Place to Be a Woman’ made me think just how lucky  women of Britain are and how our basic rights can be taken for granted. Within the episode, Stacey visits the country of Honduras and some of the despicable acts that happen there are completely unbelievable. This documentary reveals the utter disrespect that the men have for women, they feel no remorse or guilt in abusing and even murdering their wives; many men's response being soley 'They deserved it.' Honduras has the worlds highest murder rate for women, and statistics prove that the numbers are increasing. There has even been a word created for the murder of a woman – femicide, and in the last year alone '1100 women were either murdered or kidnapped'.

A common reason for the murder of a women in Honduras is their beauty. Santa Barbara is known globally for its very beautiful women and the most publicised case of femicide was the death of the ‘countries sweetheart’ Miss Honduras and her sister. Miss Honduras was shot 12 times by the host of the party (her boyfriend). He then went on to shoot her sister who tried to intervene. The brutality of their murders was one of the worst Honduras has ever seen, and the reason for her murder? She was dancing with another man when her boyfriend saw, he used this as his opportunity to kill. Some of the men at the party even helped bury the bodies, when I heard this I felt so angry and disgusted, not one person reported the crime to the police and the other witnesses watched as he shot them both. Watching the interview with the girls' mother made me feel outraged, I wish that her questions could be answered, this is the least he could do after killing both of her daughters for what seems to be no reason at all.

Other cases that were discussed in the documentary were the murder and/or kidnapping of models in general. Models in Honduras are huge targets, this type of job is one of the few ways to escape poverty in this country and some men do not like women having this independence and freedom. They use this as an excuse to take control away from them in an extreme way. Throughout the programme I kept thinking that in our country, women are so lucky as we have a voice and aren’t treated differently just because of our gender. However, then I went on to think about how various brands use women and their beauty to sexualise their campaigns. 

 For example, the Tom Ford campaigns use women as an accessory in order to show the male domination in the shoot. Personally, I think using naked women is demoralising and a disrespectful way to promote clothing and fragrances, it does not increase sales so why do brands do it? The huge clothing chain, American Apparel is best known for its sexualisation of women within its campaigns, customers are always intrigued as to what their new advertisements will be because they always push the boundaries. However, I don't think that showing women's beauty should be displayed to this extent - it is degrading. Unsurprisingly American Apparel recently hit the headlines with their provocative advertisements leading them to bankruptcy, this highlights how women of today's society are no longer standing for this demoralisation.

Quotations referenced from documentary: BBC - The World's Worst Place to Be a Woman

Photo Credit - Pinterest

Accessory Trends A/W

During the week, we were set a group task to research the bag trends for A/W 15/16. I was really surprised to find over 10 key trends for bags alone. As a starting point, I put a moodboard together combining the trends that I had already seen displayed in retail and print (magazines). Then as a group we collected images from magazines and online to create a big moodboard and grouped the trends under subtitles - colour, silhouette, graphics, materials, print/pattern, trims and key styles.

From all of the research, we selected a few trends that we thought were more prominent than others:

1.     Colour - Autumn Rust

2.     Print/Pattern – Exotic Reptile

3.     Trims – Cowboy Fringing

4.     Silhouette – 70’s Saddle

5.     Silhouette – Daily Duffle

 

The next stage in the process was to get some primary research and go into a range of shops and consider the trends that each shop had adopted. We went into shops for each market sector - value (Primark/Asda), mass (Accessorize/River Island), masstige (Topshop/Zara), middle (Reiss/Ted Baker) and high (Vivienne Westwood/Gigi Bottega). As well as collecting research for the trends, we had to consider the 7 p's of marketing - price, promotion, people, product, physical evidence, place and process. I found that the value market shops let you get on with shopping and they rarely spoke to you, whereas when I went to the high end retailers, shop assistants focused on their customer service and were very informative and helpful. This created a better shopping experience with a personal touch. When photographing the products, the mass/masstige market shops didn't want us photographing the bags whereas the high end stores were very happy with us taking photographs and gave us a lot of extra information about the products. We thought this was because the high street brands were priced roughly the same and used very similar styles/materials, the staff were more protective over the products. We gathered that these types of stores focused on their competition with one another as they are targeting the same audiences unlike designer brands that have a certain customer and have less pressure on competition.

My 3 favourite retailers for this task were:

1- River Island

I found River Island had the best layout in terms of visual presentation, it was clear that each section was a different colour theme and they had incorporated bags as the central focus and then added other accessories and shoes to match the bag and clothes in that area. I also found that bags were placed all over the store and there was a specific area for them towards the back of the store. One wall was full of pastel coloured bags and the other wall filled with bags of our colour story. 

2- Gigi Bottega

This store was a tiny boutique that sells brands such as Miu Miu, Stella McCartney etc. I liked the concept of the layout, there were four rails and cabinets that were positioned like a wardrobe. I thought that this was unique and they only had a few items of clothing placed on the rails so it didn't look too overcrowded, quality over quantity. The manager was very approachable and friendly which made us feel at ease, she told us that once they sold a bag, they would replace it with a completely new bag as they only stocked one of each bag. I liked this idea because it makes you feel special as no one in the area can purchase the same bag as you from that store.

3- Vivienne Westwood

The interior in this store was beautiful, you could tell that it was expensive. The sales assistance were dressed head to toe in Vivienne Westwood clothing and they knew everything about the different products and best sellers. They told us that there was a bag (The snake board game weekend) that costs £240 made in Nairobi from recycled materials that is hand painted. The proceeds go to the African communities and supports the work of thousands of women micro-producers. Westwood has been working with the Ethical Fashion Initiative since 2010, currently 250 local people are involved in Vivienne Westwood's manufacturing. I found this really interesting but was shocked that there hasn't been much promotion for this product - it was on the first floor of the store and there were no banners or promotional signs.

Our next task is Street Style,

I will be doing a blog post on our findings so stay tuned!

 Photo Credit - WGSN, Google Images

Applying the FCP process

For our first group task, we were only told that we have to pick a colour palette from four choices, then once we picked the colour theme, we had to choose a sub category to focus on. The choice of colour palettes were complex colours, brights, pastels and neutrals. My team decided to pick the bright colour palette and focus on jewel tones.

Throughout this mini project, we followed the FCP process. This involves four main steps:

1.    Context – insight led strategy

2.    The Big Idea – creates an impact to achieve the stated aim

3.    Creative Concept – interpretation of the big idea

4.    Executions – finalised outcomes

Context

To start our research, we each created a pin board on Pinterest, mine was initially called “Brights - Jewels” collating all images that related to our colour story. I started to recognise that lots of interiors were showing up with jewel colours. Most of the interiors had a Mediterranean theme and reminded me of countries such as Morocco. Narrowing it down, I then focused on Morocco and interiors/architecture. I renamed my original board “Mediterranean Jewels” as we collectively decided this would be our theme. Whilst researching, I came across the Yves Saint Laurent house in Morocco, a couple of years ago I visited this house on a family holiday, I found it beautiful and peaceful.

I loved the colours of this house and we wanted to enforce the idea of “bright” jewels, using inspiration from the colours of the house – Moroccan Pop. 

I then created another board on Pinterest called “Kingdom of Morocco” which included other ideas that linked to Morocco, our colour palette and the house. For example, spices, markets, incense, tiles, mosaics and cactus plants.

The Big Idea

From the research, our aim was to use the colour palette with a combination of pop art and try to recreate a sense of Morocco.

 We came up with two main ideas:

1.    Focus on the architecture = use cactus (as this has been a key motif trend) to resemble the house, make the cactus colourful and experiment with composition

2.    Focus on markets/incense/spices = Inspiration from Sex and the City - Use spices combined with eye shadow to get the jewel palette and experiment with presentation

 Creative Concept

After having a peer discussion, we decided to combined the two ideas together, changed the colour of the cactus and got eye shadow/spices to sprinkle onto the paper, however, this looked too busy and complex so we needed to simplify our idea. We focused on YSL House and wanted the cactus to be our focus point.

 We then experimented with different coloured backgrounds and the composition of the cactus. To get the vibrant colours, we edited the colours of the cactus and the background on Photoshop. Altering the hue and saturation helped adjust the cactus to the tone we wanted and replace colour made the background stronger so they resembled the house and our ideal colour palette.

Execution

Finally, we got to our outcome and named the display “An escape to Morocco”

Photo Credit/Colour Strips - Chloe & Millie

Alien Encounters

This weekend I visited Nottingham Contemporary, a free gallery exhibiting many talented artists and creators. The current exhibition is called “Alien Encounters” and presents four solo exhibitions. The exhibition that stood out the most to me was “Don’t commit suicide just because you are afraid of death” by Danai Anesiadou. As soon as you walk into the room you are overwhelmed by a display of colour and pattern created through performance, instillations and sculptures.

Danai Anesiadou moved back to Greece the week that the Battle Star Gallactia was taking place, which stemmed her work in this exhibition that aims to confront personal issues affecting certain individuals and communities. She says “Just look at the situation of my country. My future is unknown.” Covering the walls are historic images, myths and biblical stories intertwined with Danai’s temporary portraits of her friends. Anesiadou has suffered a turbulent life, involved in political and social uproar, this exhibition focuses on those who are brave, she has only included portraits of her friends who haven’t fled the country. Below are some sculptures that are featured in the exhibition, they are plastic vacuumed pieces that are filled with her friends personal belongings.

At first glance, I had no idea what these sculptures conveyed but I thought they were interesting because it was clear to see that there were a personal message hidden within. On December 11th, Anesiadou will reveal the history that influenced her work at the Nottingham Contemporary which I am looking forward to.

Photo Credit - Chloe Ferdinand

Burberry - Brand Heroes

Last night was the premier of Burberrys 2015 Christmas Advert, held in the Regent Street flagship store. Yet again, Burberrys christmas ad gained lots of coverage in the press, many famous faces appeared at the event and excited customers that were waiting for the video to launch online. The idea behind the advert was to celebrate 15 years of Billy Elliot, the iconic British film that everyone adores. After the preview of the ad, the actual cast of Billy Elliot performed for the people attending the evening. From a promotional view, Burberry has created a very successful ad and they have managed to keep true to their brand. As you can see from the website, Burberry continuously aim to represent and show off British talent and promote upcoming British singers/bands/models, allowing them to be featured on the website and perform in catwalk shows. 

 In 2014, I was lucky enough to have an internship at Burberrys Head Office. Whilst working on a photoshoot for the website, Christopher Bailey came to the studio for a catch up with the stylists to see how the shoot was going. It was very clear to see that Bailey was very approachable and wanted to interact with all the employees and get their opinions on the company and the ideas that he had. The "British" theme is apparent throughout the departments and all employees want perfection and continue to enforce this idea to correspond with the brand message. From a inside and outside perspective, I would class Burberry as a Brand Hero, every brand should have the same work ethic and enthusiasm to allow the company to grow.

The ad mirrors the opening scene from Billy Elliot with a British cast including faces such as Romeo Beckham, Naomi Campbell, James Corden, James Bay, Julie Walters, Rosie Huntington – Whiteley and Sir Elton John. I love the age range in the ad, it means that Burberry have reached all ages for their target audience and everyone can relate, from Romeo Beckham to Julie Walters. Photographer Mario Testino was also on set shooting the still images for the campaign. Although this advert isn’t as emotional or festive as others may be, the famous names involved will create lots of attention. I found the ad cute, funny and eye catching, this is down to the varied choice of celebrities that are featured.  

From the collections to the art direction and the advertisement, Burberry have got it spot on!

Photo Credit - Google Images