Eleanor Rose FCP

We are all aware of the reality behind fast fashion. Sweat shops, under payment and horrid conditions but were we aware of the impact tight deadlines have on the workers from a sexual and physical abuse stand point?

Companies such as H&M, Gap and others create such fast turn around for collection and stock that the pressure for the workers is immense. The stressful situations and pressure on managers often end in physical and sexual abuse as a form of punishment. In an article on the Business of Fashion it says that over 550 reports of sexual and physical abuse have been reported from the suppliers of the two high street stores. Remember thats only the times its been reported, id hate to think how many times went unreported out of ear of job termination.

“[My] batch supervisor came up behind me as I was working on the sewing machine, yelling, ‘You are not meeting your target production.’ He pulled me out of the chair and I fell on the floor. He hit me, including on my breasts. He pulled me up and then pushed me to the floor again [and] kicked me.”

“When girls scold machine operators for touching them or grabbing them, they take revenge. Sometimes they give them machines that don’t function properly. Then they don’t come and repair it for a long time. After that, supervisors scold us for not meeting the target.”

For us in the western world it is easy to say “well why don’t they quit” but this is just not an option for these people. Countries such as India where this happens are so saturated with sweat shops they are often the only option of job and although pay is awful often pay a better and more steady wage than any alternative.

Think of this next time you are at work complaining or you mess up. Be thankful all you get is a stern look or less.

Outcomes is the part of the FCP process where we create mockups and imagery to express how our concept would work and look in society. I decided to mock up some bottle ideas first so that I could show how the pop culture would inspire the bottle and to show how they would work as a collectible set.

DISCLAIMER I AM NOT A PHOTOSHOP WIZ BY ANY MEANS!

I also wanted to be able to express how I would use connect the concept to the consumer through an event. So i created a itinerary sheet and some mock ups of the content that could be produced following the trip if I were to take influencers.

Hopefully this gives you an idea of how we as FCP students express our concepts seeing as most of the time they are hypothetical situations that we have to create ways to express.

So I have been a Fashion student since I was 16 and neadless to say a lot of the time we are using moodboards to express our ideas and keep us on track moving projects forward.

I will be the first to say Its easy to fall into a rut with them and not have any inspiration to create good looking and idea provoking boards.

For this reason and nostalgia reasons I am sharing a few of the moodboards I’ve created over the years to act as a starting point. Or to just give you an insight into a Fashion Students main way of communication!

 

Soooo as most people know the 2018 series of love island started a few days ago and I for one am very excited. I was glued to the show last year and I have been morning the loss of it till this season arrived.

Although most of us have a guilty pleasure for the show should we be encouraging it?

There are many issues with the show. Theres the issue of only seeing perfect bodies, the idea of relationships being a sort of contract/ ownership, Peoples value being calculated by their physical appearance and the idea that girls still dumb themselves down to seem “cute”. In 2018 should this even be allowed on tv?

In a time where self love and body positivity is on the up it seems a bit backwards to be showing only perfect skinny ,gorgeous bodies. It sends all the wrong signals, that your value in a relationship is based on your looks and that only one type of body is beautiful. However are we being too sensitive? Would we enjoy it as much if the reality of what bodies really look like was shown? All good questions and I don’t believe there is really a right answer. My view is that although i would love to see some curvier women and some men with dad bods I just don’t think Love Island is at the top of the worry list for this type of issue. In a time where tensions are so high maybe a little bit of harmless perfection isn’t any harm? What do you think? Or do you not care? Maybe you just like to sit back and thank god it isn’t you on there.

One issue I  do have  with  program is the idea of the girls dumbing themselves down for the camera and the boys. Its a childish idea and something that most males/females would actually agree is a turn off. However I don’t want to bad mouth the girls because I know that most of what we see has been carefully edited to look a certain way and I guarantee the stuff we don’t see it the stuff we really need to see.

Although we could say a lot of bad stuff about the program there is no denying it’s entertaining and very successful year after year. I will continue to watch for the summer (of course) i just think its important that while we sit back and turn off from the real world we don’t get too caught up thinking Love Island is a real world.

What would you like to see change about the show for future years? Same sex couples? Yes thats something I would like to see!

Yesterday we found out the terrible news that designer Kate Spade had taken her life via hanging herself in her New York home. It’s a tragic loss and I sincerely hope that out of it comes more education on mental health as kate had reportedly been struggling with what her family thought was bipolar disorder for three of four years but never became diagnosed.

I am going to focus on her life and career as a designer and remember her for her amazing work in the industry.

Kate started her career as a accessories editor at Mademoiselle but in 1993 kate set out to design the perfect handbag. She debued a collection of six silhouettes. She focused on combining sleek ,professional shapes with vibrant colour palettes ,which had not been seen before.

Kate and her husband opened their first shop in New York City Soho in 1996  with $35,000 but very quickly made that back. By 2006 the revenue was reportedly $99 Million. (you couldn’t walk anywhere between 1997-2000 without seeing a Kate Spade Nylon bag).

The company didn’t stay private for long and in 1999 56% of the company was bought for $34 Million. And in 2006 the remaining 44% was bought by the same company for $59.4 Million.

The company originally sold handbags and went on to sell stationary and accessories. Now the brand as a clothing line along with their bags/accessories and stationary.

The brand was bought again in 2006 for $126 Million and began to sell in outlet villages and Malls which is how it is best known today.

Although Kate herself hasn’t been involved directly with the brand for over a decade it is very clear she left her mark on the handbag and accessories world. Before Kate Spade handbags were plain and dull, she added the colour and the playfulness which is still a huge trend to this day.

Its is a tragic loss that she is gone but we can be sure that her name will live on and her influence will carry on being seen.

Tonight I went back to my old college to see my friend Louise’s final piece for her art foundation year. I was really impressed with the level of professionalism in the work and the amazing array of concepts shown.

Here are a few snippets of the exhibition.

  

So this is Louise along with her Final Major Project. I met Louise three years ago when we started our Fashion and Clothing course at Warwickshire College. Louise will be attending the London College of Fashion in September to study costume for performance.

Louise’s FMP is all about growth and decay. She had a brilliant video portraying this along side sound and a visual hanging display.

Watch the video and keep an eye on what she gets up to at Uni HERE!!!

 

The next step after deciding on a communication theme I did some research into the actual artists I would like to collaborate with.

I decided on three instagram based collagists who are situated in three different W Hotels locations.

@thedailysplice : A english artist.

@vypunto : An artist from Spain

@nanonpon : An artist from Japan

I next mocked up some product with the three artists and their locations as the illustration.

Keep updated here for more examples of outcomes for this assignment.

The next step in creating the look for my fragrance idea was to decide on the visual look and language of the brand. In order to do this i created three mood boards with three possible themes for the fragrance.

1. CLASSIC AND CLEAN: This theme is the idea of sticking with how hotel products currently look. The minimalism trend has been very popular the past few years and the “laboratory” trend has been particularly big in the past year or so. The idea of knowing ingredients and trusting a brand.

2 ) COLOUR AND POP-CULTURE: this theme is playing on and linking to the idea of the W-Hotels brand being heavily linked with pop culture, music and fashion. It is the idea of the bottles themselves being collaborations with local artists.

3) The third idea is focusing on the idea of travel and memories. Having the aesthetic of the brand to be very story based and less about the product and more about the location you collect it from. Quite a simplistic look with key words and locations.

Next I wanted to make sure I got the opinion of the consumer themselves. Which luckily are all the people Who i follow/follow me back online. Therefore I chose my two top themes and created a ballot on instagram to get the opinion of the age range themselves.

The Winning theme was ” Colourful/pop-culture”. If your interest in seeing how i will use this theme to communicate the story/idea keep your eye out for part 3!

 

For my most recent assignment I was given the brand W Hotels to create a fragrance for. The brand is a branch of the Starwood hotels company and is aimed at millennial ages 18-30.

The Hotel company prides themselves off of being an experiential stay and somewhere connected to all sorts of pop culture for young adults to make memories.

I started off my making a simple mind map of all the ideas that first popped into my mind and then narrowed it down to three favourite ideas.

I looked into detail at the three ideas and then decided on the one “big idea”.

This is what i came up with:

” A set of Genderless fragrances. Each W hotel location to have its own specific scent linked to its location. Available in the hotel gift shops and also given in comfort packs (tester size) on flights. This means the W hotel name will be seen by people who haven’t heard of it before but also allows people who can’t afford the brand to be included ( a gateway product). The products will be part of a collection to encourage consumers to travel more to collect more and to also allow them to have a tangible way to remember their experiences and physically see their memories stack up.”

If your interested in seeing this idea through to the outcomes stage keep an eye out for the following parts of this mini series.

 

Soooooooooo, for anybody who doesn’t know what has gone on here let me explain, earlier this week lush the cosmetics company unveiled a new campaign. Lush are know for creating risky and attention grabbing campaigns (have a read about a previous campaign I’ve looked into HERE) however this new one has not quite gone down as planned.

The “paid to lie” campaign is shedding light on the issues facing the police recently with “spy cops” being named. It has come to the publics attention that there have been instances where Officers have been living a double life and often for years acting as spouses , friends , sexual partners to many leaders and powerful people working in activism in order to gain intelegence on their movements and intentions.

Many, many people have criticised Lush with opinions about how disrespectful it is to the officers who put their lives at risk for us , and that “its the victims fault and they should be aware of the possibilities that come with their activism roles”. However the campaign is still due to run for three weeks and im sure many more opinions will surface during that time.

I wanted to share my opinion as a Fashion Communications student who hopes to be working with the people making these decisions in the future.

I believe that the intentions of Lush were never to offend all officers and upset the public, I think they were as they normal  just trying to shed light on a situation that the public may not be aware of.

However they took a risk with the verbal and non verbal language of the campaign and it did not pay off, I think they should have taken the standpoint of helping the victims and getting their stories out there without the negative slashing of the Police.

No matter what your opinion of the situation is there is no doubting that the campaign has taught people who weren’t aware of it, that it is an issue at hand that needs addressing. Maybe this wasn’t a risk to not pay off and maybe this was the intention all along . Perhaps Lush was aware of the controversy they would make but weren’t scared of it. So maybe this is actually a very smart publicity stunt created by the Lush team and that they just have some hugeeeeeeee balls and a massive passion for the project.

Let me know your opinion I would love to know!