I've decided to start doing weekly round ups of my sessions at university beginning in January 2017 so that I can keep up with my modules and track the progress of each assignment. Having received a number of briefs by Wednesday afternoon, I noticed that reflection and analysis of my individual work as well as group work will play a big role in my projects this term, so for my own benefit, recording what I have achieved and worked on each week should greatly help me. On Tuesday, the first day back since Christmas, we were briefed on the new Trend project. I'm still a bit confused about the whole process of putting together my trend forecast, extended from Part A in the first term. Last term I learnt that the process itself is supposed to be quite drawn out and lengthy so I'm reassured that my work will all come together in the end! Working towards Trend this week, I've so far put together a Pinterest board full of inspiration with the hopes of narrowing down my aesthetic. Although my final trend forecasting piece should consist of mainly conceptual visual images rather than beauty shots, I began initially to pin beauty shots to my board in order to 'get the ball rolling'. Then I took to WGSN to find some inspo about the future of the beauty market and the trends for 2017. This was so helpful at cementing some factual information on which to form the basis of my forecast reasoning. It confirmed my suspicions regarding the luxury market and its increased popularity and also introduced me to the idea of smart technology, virtual reality and social media integrating with the market. Then I looked at business reports on Mintel - specifically a report on 'prestige beauty' - in order to find out more about the consumer's reasoning behind purchasing luxury goods so that I can begin to build my consumer profile and visual consumer portrait.
On Tuesday afternoon, we had a guest lecture from Nina Ahmad who has worked professionally in the industry as a writer. I enjoyed hearing about her journey from workplace to workplace and it really emphasised to me the importance of experiencing roles in a number of different companies as she expressed all that she had learnt in women's magazines like Bella and Glamour as well as tabloid newspaper, The Sun, and publishing group, Redwood. During her talk I also visited her LinkedIn page to see more in depth about the companies and lengths of time she spent at them. Her experience as an editor in a number of positions was so inspiring to me. While I've never put much thought into working as an editor - the thought still sounds so far away and unattainable right now - my ambition to spend a career in writing and the fashion industry has really solidified over the past few weeks. I'm really excited to get stuck into my writing assignment as this is much more interesting/challenging and can be personalised to my own writing style, while I didn't enjoy writing the PR essay at all last term for a multitude of reasons!
On Wednesday we were firstly briefed about our lookbook assignment and then we moved onto intercultural. This will be the first time I take on really big assignments as part of a group of people I've never worked with before and the thought is quite daunting/scary, although I know as long as we communicate and allocate rolls well then things should (hopefully) run smoothly. The lookbook assignment seems like a mammoth task but it's going to be really exciting and it's a relief to be doing something a bit more creative and hands-on as a lot of time was spent sat at a computer last term. We were presented with a collection of jackets created by fashion design students and worked our way around the room as a group discussing what we liked and disliked about the garments. I'm happy with our chosen garment as it has already formed the basis of our collection theme for a Bonmarche sub-brand, given that the jacket is made of a brown tweed-like material and really expresses a 'country'/'equestrian' vibe. We were also given our brief on the Intercultural Consumer module on Wednesday and I'm honestly still quite confused about this too as frustratingly, our stand-in lecturer is still familiarising herself with the project as we are. We were given a small task to complete about Frame, a denim and clothing brand, to complete in our own time. We allocated the tasks into one bullet point each and I did my research when I got home by searching the social media channels and ways that the brand reaches out to its audience.
On Thursday I attended a lecture from Stephen on the Strategic Fashion Communications module. Rather than being briefed, we covered the basics on the idea of branding so that we may start to understand more about the intricacies of the brief next week. I also set up a group message between our lookbook/branding group so that we can keep up conversation and share ideas. I then emailed the design student of our chosen garment letting her know who we were and enquiring about any inspiration or additional information she may have had about the garment which could inform ideas about our own project, adding every member of my group into the email so that they can stay up-to-date and offer input too if they'd like to.
On Friday, myself and a few FCP girls all went on a trip to Manchester to make the most of the free time that we have in these first few weeks back before things get reeeeally stressful again! We had lunch out, took lots of outfit shots for our personal blogs and social media accounts, had an evening meal and drank lots of cocktails, and also popped into the Manchester Art Gallery for our second visit around the Fashion & Freedom exhibition. We picked up free copies of Stylist magazine and Metro newspaper and after a browse through those, found lots of fashion content inside. We visited Marks & Spencer, a brand which has featured quite prominently in my Critical Journal over the past few months, where I was really surprised to find how good the quality of the sale was! I found some really nice pieces and I liked an interactive feature within store which allowed me to search for items and check their availability. On Sunday, I had a look around the Huddersfield Bonmarché store to get a feel for the products and the type of consumer who shops there as I had never visited a store before.
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