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)