Fashion Meets Product - WEEK ONE

Day One; Paul Smith Exhibition at the Design Museum

Today we went to the Paul Smith Exhibition at the Design Museum for the introduction to the latest project. For the next two weeks we were given the opportunity to pick from a range of projects so I chose Fashion Meets Product. I chose this project because I like to consider myself a more promotion type student but this would give me the opportunity to do something a bit different and add some more variety to my sketchbook. 

The Paul Smith Exhibition was really interesting and I really enjoyed it. There were lots of different little rooms showing Paul's work and his mind and inspiration behind a lot of his projects. It showed how his designs from his fashion have been included in everyday objects and products such as radios, water bottles, cars, skis, etc. It was a good introduction to the project as it shows how fashion can be used in other ways and incorporated in to different products other than just clothes and accessories. My favourite product at the exhibition was the old fashioned Mini car that has been painted with Paul Smith's trademark stripes. 

If i were to compare my work with Paul's I would say it is extremely different as he uses a lot of colour in his work, in fact colour is so important to his work and he loves using it in all his designs. Whereas I prefer to work with more minimal colours and a greyscale colour scheme. My work is also very organised and I like to keep things neat whereas the environment Paul Smith works in is extremely different. However the exhibition has showed me that sometimes it is good to let go a bit because it can help you be more creative and come up with some new interesting ideas.

I'm now really looking forward to getting started with the project in the next few days. 

Day Two; collaboration, fashion designer and product designer, initial idea development

INDUSTRY PROJECT; WEEK ONE

Day One; introduction to industry project

Today was the start of the Industry project where we were put in to groups of six and given a different brand to "work for". Our group was given Burberry, and we have to design and promote their Autumn/ Winter 2014 line. Each of us have been given different roles within the group where we will have to plan every detail that will go on for the development of Burberry AW14.

We started by coming up with a concept board that explained each role within the group and the overall theme of the project. I decided that I would be best suited to doing the promotional side for Burberry as their are more confident and better designers within the group. My role within the group is to plan the catwalk show and the events for Burberry AW14. I think that this is a good role for me as of course I have an interest in fashion but I also have a passion for interior design etc so that will link in quite well with this role. 

Once we established who would be what within the group we were given a quote to help us come up with a theme/ concept for our collection. 

‘there are massive gaps in this essay, it is broken and re-wound,

not always knowing and yet searching.

Respond, Exchange, Converse.

Be a traveller in this novel,

Even if only for a while.’

‘All that is solid melts in to air, all that is holy is profaned, and men at last are forced to face with sober sense the real conditions of their lives and their relations with their fellow men.’ (The Communist Manifesto)

At first when we looked at the quote we were drawn to the lines "not always knowing and yet searching" and "Be a traveller in this novel". This sort of led to this idea of looking at the way social class used to be perceived in the 19th and early 20th century; where the poor people were at the bottom and the rich were at the top. This gave us an idea that some designs would be fairly plain and simple with a greyscale colour scheme and then some would be more intricate and developed with richer colours used. This gave me the idea that for the runway show, the looks that come out first would be the more simplistic styles and then as it goes the show gets richer and deeper within the collection. We also realised that it is important that we maintain a very British feel with our collection, and we wanted to sort of focus on the idea of nature etc.

I created an overall mood board of images for the group so that we could get a feel for Burberry and things that we need to consider for our collection. 

I think that our idea is good however we thought about a bit more after monday and realised that we hadn't really got much to go on in terms for the design so we were messaging back and fourth as a group and re-looked at the quote. Johanna came up with the idea of looking at british paganism and the worship of nature as their is a line in the quote "all that is holy is profaned". We all liked the idea and so our concept is still similar to before but now we have more to go with and it gives all of us a bit more to go on in terms of our individual roles. This has solved the problem of all of us being a little confused as we didn't have an image/ word that gave us a clear image in our head of what we are going to use for our Burberry collection.

Before thursday I have started working on my sketchbook and made mood boards for my role of the catwalk and events so that I can show the group some of my ideas. I've also done some more research in to Burberry and it's history so that I have more of a feel of them as a brand. I also researched a bit in to british paganism as I wasn't completely sure about it so that I know that I am doing the right thing for our group. I have held back a bit on doing too much in my sketchbook incase ideas change or I do something that doesn't work with our concept. 

So far I am excited about this project; I like that we are working in groups as we can bounce ideas around and it's nice to see what other people are thinking. I think I have a really good group and we are all confident with our roles so I think that this could be a really successful project for all of us. It is only a two-week project so I can imagine it is going to be very jam-packed so I need to make sure that I keep on top of my work (which I am normally quite good at) so that I can keep up to speed with everyone else and have really good work and idea development for the presentation at the end.