Sportswear

We started off the sportswear project by visiting well known sports shops such as LilyWhites, Nike Town, Adidas etc… We had to take note of things that interested us in each shop and how each brand is promoted differently. In Nike Town (where all of the images have been taken) the layout and design of the shop is very extravagant and interactive, where as in LilyWhites everything is very basic and not very creative. The things that interested me the most in Nike Town was the variety of interactive and creative displays. There were images of iconic sportsmen/women, films, sculptures, installations, games and well thought out advertisements and campaigns (old and new).  When we had finished photographing inspirational ideas in each sports shop we were given a quick styling task, were we had to pick a range of different outfits and take "selfies". I feel that this task really did improve my understanding of sportswear, from shape, fit and material, to sport, colour and combination. The images did not have to be creative but it  was for us to get a clearer understanding of sportswear. After this exercise we had to choose a sport or brand to promote and look in to previous adverts, campaigns, films, editorials etc… That could potentially inspire us. 

I started off by looking at Nike adverts and noticed that there is mostly a hidden meaning behind the brightly coloured and technology inspired clothing. I became aware that Nike tend to touch on dreams, culture and poverty a lot which is very contrasting due to Nikes very American wealthy status. 

I have demonstrated some of the Nike adverts that interested me, they are both fairy different styles, but there are certain aspects of both that I could incorporate into a video of my own. The first advert particularly interests me, its very stripped back and simple, the production is far from contrived and the American wealthy connotations Nike adverts can have (like the second one) are not at all present. Its just one boy, in an open field, jogging and achieving a goal with a pair of nike trainers on. Now that I was set on the idea of filmmaking in a Nike style advertisement, I had to choose a sport to base it on. I wanted to stick to the unusual social matters that Nike sometimes touch upon and use a really unexpected sport that most people are not familiar with. A friend of mine suggested the Japanese Martial Arts, Aikido, because her brother was  practicing at the time. I had personally never heard of Aikido before, so this was perfect for my concept. I wanted to use an uncommon sport to utilise the idea of contrast, most people think of popular sports when they hear "Nike" such as football or running. I thought it would be interesting if I could combine a obscure sport with a brand known world wide. The idea isn't to promote Aikido, but to echo the fact that Nike can in fact be worn for the majority of sport, training or practices.  To continue on from this idea of "Nike being worn for anything"  I thought the video would benefit form showing before and after training shots. These would include street style nike trainers, clothing and gym bag contrasting with the traditional wrap around jacket and black trousers. I also came up with the idea of using an untypical ethnicity for my model to exaggerate my initial contrasting idea. 

Aikido is a Japanese martial art developed by Morihei Ueshiba as a synthesis of his martial studies, philosophy, and religious beliefs. Aikido is often translated as "the way of unifying with life energy or as the Way of harmonious spirit." Ueshiba's goal was to create an art that practitioners could use to defend themselves while also protecting their attacker from injury. Aikido is performed by blending with the motion of the attacker and redirecting the force of the attack rather than opposing it head-on. Aikido training is mental as well as physical, emphasising the ability to relax the mind and body even under the stress of dangerous situations.

合 – ai – joining, unifying, combining, fit

気 – ki – spirit, energy, mood, morale

道 – dō – way, path

I also decided to review the work of Marina Abramović, she is a Serbian performance artist who's work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. I thought that Abramović's style would be complementary to my idea because of its personal connection and thought provoking messages that run throughout. 

Frank Uwe Laysiepen is another performance artist who worked and had a relationship with Abramovic in the ’70s. In 1988, the two artists decided to make a spiritual journey to represent the end of their relationship. After several years of tense relations, Abramović and Ulay decided to make a spiritual journey which would end their relationship. Each of them walked the Great Wall of China, 
starting from the two opposite ends and meeting in the middle. Ulay [Frank Uwe Laysiepen stage name] 
would start in the west in the Gobi Desert, and Abramovic would jump off from the far eastern end 
of the Wall at the Yellow Sea, after more than 1,000 miles each, they would meet in the centre. 

 “We needed a certain form of ending, after this huge distance walking towards each other. It is very human. It is in a way more dramatic, more like a film ending … Because in the end you are really alone, whatever you do.”

Abramovic and Ulay had fallen out of love by the time they actually took their walk in 1988. In fact, they had stumbled into a kind of hate or, at least, distaste for each other. The Lovers no longer loved one another. The Wedding which was to have ended the Walk had become a Divorce. As well as the story behind the video, the camera shots, angles and way of displaying these shots really interest me. Showing Ulay and Abramović on their separate journeys in the same frame creates a real sense of contrast. I think that I could use this method in my final video to show the contrast between nike street fashion, Nike Aikido sportswear and Traditional Aikido-wear.

Final Outcome

(Authors Own, Layout)
(Manners, Charlotte Photography & Styling)

The imagery to the right shows the groups final outcome, the text was written by Nikisha and "full bleed" photography was taken  by Charlotte Manners. Somewhere along the lines of creating the spread, other members of the group had not considered the pre-designed layout that I had produced. Although I feel that the imagery shot by the photographer is excellent, it does not meet the requirements of the layout design, or reflect the trend we initially decided upon. Sadly the photography was handed to me a day before the due date, making it too late to create an entirely new page layout in time…. I thought that it was essential to demonstrate the lifestyle and fashion of the people that we are promoting our new trend to, so I decided to finalise the outcome by producing a more relevant editorial style photo shoot. As I worked so hard on designing the layout and creating a "Paper Wardrobe" for the spread, I felt an obligation to complete the project to the best of my ability. 

Below shows my personal final outcome, still using the original article produced by Nikisha, but my own take on the editorial photography. I think that this imagery reflects the trend more appropriately, showing the swerve and sophisticated lifestyle through choice of location and fashion that is "on trend" through choice of styling and clothing. I am now happy with the final outcome, and I think that it accurately demonstrates the initial concept, but something I feel that would make the editorial stronger is if we had contrasting gender models to promote the clothing. 

(Authors Own, Layout, Photography, Styling and Clothing Design)

Here is a finalised version of the "Paper Wardrobe"  that i completed, it shows two models of the opposite sex in simple black underwear, with "on trend" clothing to use interactively. The layout of this particular concept will appear as a double sided card insert where the audience are required to choose which side of the paper wardrobe they wish to cut out and use. I now realise that this idea slightly resolves my worry about only having a female model in the editorial. I printed this out in both card and translucent acetate to see which would work best, and what I found is, the two materials work well together rather than each on their own.

(Authors Own, Layout and Clothing Design)
(Manners, Charlotte, Photography)

(Authors Own, Moving Giff demonstrating Female Paper Wardrobe)

Trend Report Canary Warf Vs. Shoreditch

Creating a Trend

The aim of this project is to create a trend, give the trend a name, style, indication of where these people live, age range, hangouts and music they are into etc… The  project is to be lifestyle driven, looking back at the 60's as an example. A number of   creative famous photographers, models, musicians, designers [David Bailey, Biba, Mary Qaunt, Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton, The Beatles, Rolling Stones] all contributed to shaping the term the swinging 60’s. Back then areas like Cannarby St and Kings Road were the fashionable areas. But today the current trend is Hipsters, seen in areas such as Dalston and Peckham. These areas have not always been considered desirable but what we have found out is that creative individuals and the media strongly effect the popularisation of an area… For example, Dalston used to be extremely run down and cheap, meaning that students could afford to buy houses there, as well as artists investing in cheap studio spaces. But these two groups of people need somewhere to hangout and be sociable, so local shop/bar owners invest in these new residence and create a "night/social life"

In groups we started to brainstorm what makes London unique, we came up with a range of things from the multicultural population it holds, history, fashion, icons/idols, film, music etc… Once we had thoroughly dissected "what makes London unique", we started to narrow subsections down into points that interested us the most to come up with our own trend…  


We started looking into the contrast of class and wealth and looking at how certain clothing gives people power and respect. We referred back to the brief and looked at a famous trend in the 60's of the Mods, they were very much focused on music and fashion, often tailor-made suits and music including soul, ska and R&B, and well recognised by they're  motor scooters usually Lambretta or Vespa. It wasn't so much the fashion we were interested in, but the respect and power this trend brought to people who abided by it,  it was argued that mods and rockers were youths with no serious views, who lacked respect for law and order. This led us to look at other gang related cultures, Bugsey Malone, The Mafia etc… But it brought us onto something really interesting, a gang of people named Sapeurs. They emerged out of a movement called la SAPE, that was originally inspired by a 1960s Pop Star by the name of Papa Wemba who wanted to stray from the traditional Congolese attire. Its mostly young men who drape themselves in elegant sharp attire, creating flamboyant identities for themselves through their brightly coloured suits, and luxurious swagger. Despite the extreme poverty in which they lived - their houses often simply metal shacks - the Sapeurs were driven to look their best at all times. This style is very extreme and would be hard to bring into London due to the current dark coloured trends, so we came up with an idea [also inspired by the film Bugsey Malone] of the secret identity and speakeasies.

“Those of them who can work double jobs; those who can’t must beg, borrow and occasionally steal; whatever it takes to strut in Versace, Prada and Gucci.” 

After coming up with multiple ideas based on this new trend, we had to have a suitable area to accommodate it, we decided it had to be somewhere rundown, but somewhere with potential. After much thinking and consideration we came up with the East end area of Poplar. Poplar is an historic, mainly residential area of East London in the Borough of Tower Hamlets with an extremely wealthy neighbouring area,Canary Warf. Not only Canary Warf, but the surrounding neighbourhoods are already growing communities, and these areas all have fantastic public transport links to help encourage people to visit Poplar. 

(Authors Own, Images of Poplar, Canary Warf & unique shops Collected From Google)

With a little more research in to growing areas such as Shoreditch, it became clear how we could begin to make Poplar an area people want to visit. The accommodation is already relatively cheap and there is a community driven high street which is central to 4 major tube stations "Poplar", "Allsaints", "India West Quay" and "Blackwall"… The high street would slowly be renovated with small unique business moving in that encourage our trend e.g. a combination of Retro boutiques and clothing shops where you can buy bold eccentric trends as well as simple tailored business suits with subtle pops of colour… We also came up with the idea of encouraging combined businesses like record shops combined with coffee shops, or hairdressers combined with vintage clothing shops. We hoped that the combination of businesses may help people to meet one another and share interests or create new ones, it would also encourage people that have already adopted our trend/lifestyle pass it on to others. Due to the prominent wealth associated with working in Canary Warf we thought that our audience would like to unwind in a swanky, sophisticated and comfortable environment, such as a club decorated with natural, warm interiors [Like a gentleman's club].

(Authors Own, Research Images taken in Topshop)

Because our trend does not exist at the moment it was hard to find clothes that could relate to our ideas, but the trustworthy TopShop didn't fail to let us down. With the Canary Warf worker still in mind we looked for smart, fitted and formal clothing with a massive twist of extreme colour clashing. It was relatively hard to match such vibrant and contrasting colours together in a sophisticated way, but I think we achieved some good imagery from this visit and managed to make it look anything but "chavy" and "nu-rave". Given that working in Business is stressful and can be really monotonous, our trend is great for the average business man or woman to relax and feel comfortable or someone different for a few hours in these exciting clothes and swanky lifestyle with a cocktail. I think the results we achieved with this quick styling task were really helpful and its definitely given our group something to work with when we get to our final editorial.

(Thomson, D C. Bunty the book for girls, 1977)

I was in charge of the layout design in the group and came up with an interesting concept that inspired me whilst reading "stylist" magazine the previous week. As our trend is extremely bold I thought it would be practical and stylish to keep the layout design simple and uncluttered. I had some initial design ideas for the overall layout but the concept for displaying the clothes was really quirky and different to anything I've done before. I suggested that like in the famous Bunty comics, we make a "Paper wardrobe" [see left] This idea would allow us to demonstrate our completely original trend without having to purchase any clothing for a shoot. I proposed that we do an underwear shoot with male and female models to accompany this paper wardrobe, that could be displayed as a tear out insert. I felt that this fun and unusual idea may not be enough to sell our trend so it was agreed we would try and pull together our own personal on trend items of clothing from home and produce a stylish editorial shoot that shows a clear understanding of contrast. It was suggested as a group this would be a good idea, so I then moved on to researching fashion magazine articles. I found many interesting articles all of which were filled with strong imagery and text. I  wanted it to be quite quirky and original so I looked into magazines with unusual layouts. As you can see below I came across an interesting fashion magazine called "cent", its layout is horizontal unlike most magazines, and the dimensions are perfect to create the paper wardrobe.

(Authors own, images collected from google images of magazine spreads)

I started to design the clothes for the underwear models in InDesign, using garments on the Topshop website to inspire shape of the garment as well as all the other research e.g trend reports, Topshop research, Trend research etc… Once I had finished designing the clothes I combined them on one page with the models, strategically placing each garment. I then started to create a template for our editorial layout, I made space for two full bleed landscape images and several separate areas for research pictures such as trend reports, area documentation and events related to our trend.  I am really happy with the layout and the insert designs, but unfortunately the photographers in the group didn't shoot in a landscape format so I had to work with what  I was given. I was not at all happy with the end result because it looked rushed and it didn't reflect our trend at all, but i will personally overcome this problem by shooting my own images in my own time . 

(Authors own, InDesign Design Idea)

Photoshoot

Below is an example of a basic magazine spread that I created. The images produced was from an internal photo shoot that I created at UNI, I used basic equipment such as lighting and a light meter, the backdrop was a simple black wall accompanied by some handy colour coordinated flooring. I feel that the garment has been modelled flawlessly, every interesting detail has been captured and promoted perfectly and each shot captures something completely different, showing off the garment as much as possible. I feel that the plain background really emphasises the detailing in the garment, drawing all attention to it, and the vibrant red colour of the models hair gives the shoot that bit of edge that i needed when photographing an all black piece. 

(Studio shoot for an editorial promoting garment, Author's Own)

I do feel that there is slight fault in this shoot, although it was purely experimental and I feel I have actually obtained some beautiful shots, I feel that the garment potentially has a lot more character. To me it portrays an interesting almost punk-like appearance, and I thought it would be best to consider and explore multiple outcomes for this particular shoot, and see if I could bring the garment to life. I decided to compose another shoot, and take into account what the garment means to me and what it makes me think of when I look at it and I also thought about hair, makeup and surrounding to complete the look. 

(Location shoot, story editorial, promoting garment, Author's Own)

I started off by choosing a location for my shoot, this was a block of flats just off of Hackney road, they are spacious and somewhat rundown. This was a perfect location for my shoot, not too contrived, enhancing a realistic feel to the imagery. I feel that shoots used for promoting should be as natural as possible, this way people can relate closely to what you are trying to promote/sell… In my case I am promoting a tailored, cropped, punk waistcoat, so I felt that a 60's rebellious mod-like feel would work well with this theme… 

After composing the shoot and looking through previous final outcomes throughout my portfolio, I noticed that I had a lot of basic layout, unedited editorial shoots. After some thought and trouble editing down the images I decided to create a magazine story editorial which would allow me to use multiple images with no specific structure. I then came to the conclusion that this shoot could work well with quirky filters added to the imagery and because I wanted to maintain a touch of feminine nature to the outcome, I came up with the title "Pretty in Punk". After coming up with the title I began to flick through independent magazines to get inspiration for my layout etc… I came across the magazine "Material Girl - My Luxury Diary", it is a quality, Austrian fashion magazine with beautiful metallic covers. I found some inspiration for the editing of my shoot and some interesting page layouts, I started to edit the photographs, each with a unique pink-toned light burst filter.