Marriage Equality

A friend of mine posted a video about the marriage equality on the Facebook today, it’s a 14 mins video mainly discussed the marriage equality issue, and I found it quite interesting and reflective that I should share with you here. This incredible video was produced by a Taiwanese blogger called Super Y (超級歪) provided both English & Traditional Chinese subtitles. Feel free to share the video if you like it! (:

As we all know that marriage equality is a contentious topic that has long been contested by the different groups of people in terms of their family background, ethnical issue, belief or the religious concern. In my home country (Taiwan), despite it is considered as the civil liberties country, the same sex-marriage will not be allowed according to our civil legislation. I believed many people around the world are still fighting their right towards marriage equality, and I truly hope that there would be a day arrived that everyone has the right to love or obtain love regardless of the sexual, races or religious issue.

Chanel’s Metiers d’Art 2016/17

 

Source: British Vogue (2016)

During the past two days, the news about an annual Chanel’s Metiers d’Art 2016/17 show at The Ritz Paris went viral on the internet. Honestly, I had not heard about this collection before, but reading the posts and photos posted by those well-known magazines and celebrities on the social media sites, it drove me to do some research about this line.  What is it all about?  Does it different from the Chanel seasonal show?

When Metiers D’Art established: 2002

Show Time: Annual basis

What Metiers D’Art Means: The phrase Metiers D’Art signifies that an atelier skilled in the art of craftsmanship worked on the collection, using specific textiles and knits (stylecaster, 2012).

Why Metiers D’Art: Chanel’s Métiers d’Art line aims to honoring the fine craftsmanship that its artisan partners bring to the house’s collections (Vogue Paris, 2016). The creative director Karl Lagerfeld believes that through the witnessable and touchable experience of the collection, as well as understanding the manufacturing process of the apparel, people would truly figure out that craftsmanship is a term of expressing the spirit of an art (Harper’s Bazaar Taiwan, 2016).

Where Metiers D’Art take place: The runway show that takes place outside the traditional fashion schedule, each year, Chanel turns to a different location to pay tribute to the workshops that provide the house with everything from lace to silver buttons and fine embroidery work (Vogue Paris, 2016). After Rome last year, Salzburg in 2014 and previous shows in Dallas, Edinburgh, Mumbai and New York, Chanel will be staying at home for Métiers d’Art 2016 and showing at Gabrielle Chanel’s former home, the newly re-opened Ritz, in Paris (Vogue Paris, 2016).

Who are the partners: Desrues (costume jeweler and accessory maker), Lemarié, (feather and flower maker), Massaro (bootmaker), Lesage (embroiderer), Montex (embroiderer), Goossens (jeweler and goldsmith), Maison Michel (milliner), Guillet (corsage and floral decoration maker), Causse (glove maker), Barrie Knitwear (cashmere producer), Lognon (pleater) (Vogue Paris, 2016).

When will the collection be on shelf: The following year of May

 

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  Source: British Vogue (2016)

Digital Fashion Dialogues

Digital Fashion Dialogue was a careers and networking event organised by our senior as part of their final project before graduation. The event was held yesterday on the 4th floor in the fashion studio in CULC given fashion student an opportunity to meet with fashion industry experts from a variety of areas, such as marketing, buying, design, media and some entrepreneurs.

Every student had been allocated into two meetings according to their interested, allowing them to meet the experts and asked any question regarding their query about the fashion industry, how digital is changing the dynamics and to consider about our future job roles and prospects.

I had been assigned into the meetings with Elisa Fogli, a Digital Marketing Strategist, and Ash Allibhai, a Fashion Consultant. I began the meeting with Elisa, she was Italian working in London under a fashion company who owned a wide range of brand (cannot remember the name). Her job role is to manage and observe the company’s social media sites, as well as finding the suitable and popular fashion bloggers to corporate with to promote the products. Furthermore, she showed us her dissertation work whilst she studied master in fashion marketing and management, helping us to understand what it might be required to achieve if we decided to go for the dissertation in the final term.

The second meeting with Ash Allibhai was interesting as well, he shared with us about his working journey being a fashion consultant for over 10 years. He explained that forecasting the fashion trend was not an easy task. Due to the changeable fashion world, this job required lots of reading and updated of the latest news about the industry. I asked him a question regarding whether it is important to have a good statistical skill in order to work in trend forecasting role. “Many people have misunderstood about this role, you don’t require to have excellent knowledge about statistics, instead you must have a strong passion towards fashion in order to thrive in this tough industry”, he replied.

Overall, although the one-hour meeting was not enough to figure out which is the right path or direction we should go in the future, this event indeed helped me somehow understand what I more or less willing to work at in the future. Thanks for our lecturer and seniors for organising this wonderful event for us!

Androgyny: Gender-Neutral Retail – Does it Have a Future? (3)

Influence on Store Design

Retailers will be watching Agender closely to see if Selfridges in some small way adopts genderless space after the three-month trial is over, but there is no doubt the retailer has tapped into an idea and behaviour that is manifesting itself in other ways in store design.

“The influence of a more open attitude is coming through,” says Dalziel. “In the last year our work for KappAhl in Scandinavia has created a more fluid plan, where shoppers flow from space to space, crossing between the gender divide without consciously doing it. This brand sells 50% of its menswear to women buying for men so the intertwining of the offer is perfectly natural and appropriate.”

It is a trend taking place across markets, with sight lines being cleaned up around the floor area and space being de-cluttered to the point of sparseness, such as at Hobbs’ London flagship.

In smaller-scale boutiques and in lifestyle offers the demarcation relaxes tremendously, notes Dalziel. “Spaces are typically more intimate, customers more engaged, more willing to browse, and navigation more intuitive. In these niche locations gender barriers and stereotypes can break down, such as a brand boutique like James Perse in Manhattan and Los Angeles.”

It is this more open way to shop and more flexible approach to customer boundaries that will resonate most with mainstream retailers as they look to deepen engagement with customers. The change in consumer attitude is a permanent shift and retailers that embrace an ‘everyone is welcome’ approach that enables discovery find themselves aligned with new consumer expectations.

 

Reference: Wgsn.com. (2015). Gender-Neutral Retail – Does it Have a Future?. [online] Available at: https://www.wgsn.com/content/board_viewer/#/56938/page/1 [Accessed 25 Nov. 2016].

Androgyny: Gender-Neutral Retail – Does it Have a Future? (2)

Can Gender-Neutral go Mainstream?

When it comes to stores rather than consumer attitude, gender-neutral is already prevalent in merchandising practice at some levels of the market. “When the strength of the brand overwhelms the issue of gender, brands such as Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren – because they’re lifestyle – merchandise gender together anyway,” says Nisch.

Categories where product is blended include footwear, personal care, body jewellery and unisex fragrance. Denim, footwear and casual brands and retailers, such as Converse, Vans, Tilly’s and American Eagle Outfitters, which all target younger male and female customers, also blend gender distinctions in merchandising. Product is often displayed together, male and female mannequins grouped together for a lifestyle positioning, and there is not any distinguishable difference between the men’s and women’s floor space.

The older the target consumer, however, the greater the gender skew towards more distinct male and female, and for store designers the issue of navigation in mainstream retail and established behaviours remains uppermost in mind.

“Traditional behaviours dictate that women, and to a greater extent men, need to know where they are in the space. They need to know that the product on offer is ‘for them’ and they can browse with confidence,” says David Dalziel, group creative director of brand and retail design agency Dalziel & Pow, which has worked with retailers including Primark and Debenhams.

“Androgynous fashion has yet to hit the high street with any impact. The introduction of curated lifestyle offers within brands such as J Crew and Urban Outfitters help blur the boundaries between the genders, with the neutral offer acting as a buffer between the genders but, importantly, that buffer still exists,” he adds.

From a navigational point of view, Selfridges’ introduction of gender-neutral gives its customers ‘a third filter’ alongside ‘by men’ and ‘by women’, says Jeff Kindleysides, owner of UK retail design consultancy Checkland Kindleysides, whose clients include Hunter and New Look. “It’s something a department store like Selfridges can do, because it has the stock and space available but, given the practicalities, that may halt any kind of rush towards gender-neutral [in the mainstream].”

There are also limitations on the economic viability of a gender-neutral offer. Selfridges’ Agender is understood to be a response to female customers starting to buy from menswear brands and the ranges themselves becoming more genderless – something department store Harvey Nichols picked up on with its his or hers curated online page, launched last September. For mainstream fashion retailers the appeal of gender-neutral is likely to hit a wall.

“[Gender-neutral] might be something everyone has to have an element of but as a business model it won’t work beyond a certain point because the appeal will be narrow,” adds Kindleysides.

To be continued…

Reference: Wgsn.com. (2015). Gender-Neutral Retail – Does it Have a Future?. [online] Available at: https://www.wgsn.com/content/board_viewer/#/56938/page/1 [Accessed 25 Nov. 2016].

Androgyny: Gender-Neutral Retail – Does it Have a Future? (1)

Androgyny and unisex are themes we first highlighted in 2011 and ideas fashion has been exploring for a while now, with labels such as JW Anderson in the UK, JNBY in China, and a new generation of graduating fashion designers driving the trend. This, coupled with sportswear-inspired looser-fitting styles, has led to a growth in cross-gender design at the influential directional premium level of the market.

Within retail, socially aware UK department store Selfridges has taken up the gauntlet with its recently announced Agender initiative. For eight weeks from March 12, the retailer will devote space across three floors of its London flagship to gender-neutrality, featuring unisex product curated from labels it carries, such as Yohji Yamamoto and Rad Hourani, along with five exclusive unisex collections and the launch of designer Nicola Formichetti’s Nicopanda in the UK.

Agender will run over three floors around the atrium, with a bold look designed by Studio Toogood to connect the spaces together. The ground floor will carry beauty, the first floor top-end luxury product, and the second floor will be skewed towards more youth-oriented product.

Gender-themed music, photography and film will feature in-store and the initiative will also be taken to stores in Manchester and Birmingham as well as online, where product will be featured on both male and female models.

Selfridges is well-known for being at the vanguard of retail trends, so does the arrival of its dedicated unisex apparel space mean gender-neutral space could make its way into mainstream fashion retail?

An Entrepreneur talk with Auria Swimwear

Today CULU invited the second guest speaker Diana Auria who is the Founder/ Manager & Creative Director of Auria Swimwear. Diana set up her sustainable swimwear brand in 2013 after graduating from London College of Fashion. She shared the journey about setting up her business, and how to market her brand.

 

Diana aims to develop the fashion and innovation swimwears made by the sustainable material for modern women, as she believes that style and substance should be coexisting (Auria, 2016). The raw material she used on her product is made by the fish net, which producing and manufacturing in the countries such as Slovenia and Croatia. This sustainable material can not only help to reduce the harmful impact towards the marine environment, but also helps the local community to generate an additional income. Moreover, Diana believes that as a designer, she has the obligation to tell her consumer, they have the choices on what they purchase and understanding the manufacturing process of the products they bought.

Moreover, Diana believes that as a designer, she has obligation to tell her consumer, they have the choices on what they purchase and understanding the manufacturing process of the products they bought. Overall, it is an interesting event for those students who would like to have their won brand in the future, and it is understandable that the corporate social responsibility is becoming a main trend in the fashion industry.

 

Group work for Marketing debate

Yesterday we completed the marketing debate that we had long-term prepared for two months. At the beginning of the term, we were required to form a group and did the presentation for every seminar class. This activity was in purpose to prepared for the debate, our tutor believed that the more we practice the less mistake we would make. Most of the students including myself felt less comfortable and confident to speak in public, and not everyone had done a proper presentation before in university. Notably, many art students in my class commented that they seldom being asked to involve in teamwork, as most of their works were on the individual basis. Thus, it could be said that lots of people in my class did not have much of the experience of presentation and teamwork, and this had caused some difficulties to work in a group.

There were total five people in my group, two Chinese students rarely attend the class, and one Pakistan girl joined the class three weeks before the debate. As the result, Ino (one of my member) and I were struggling to prepare for our group debate, as we had limited chance to meet and discussed with the rest of our members. Although we understood that as a “group member” we should push and motivate each other to achieve the goal, we realised that it was extremely difficult to do so if those “frequent disappear” members did not make their efforts to participate in group work. There were lots of interesting stories happened within the group, but I will not list out all of them in details.

Overall, although some accidents happened during the debate, we were satisfied with our performance. We believed that our group could perform better if we have had done enough of practice and be more engaged with each member. Even though the final result may meet our expectation, we had learned a new lesson from this experience.

Androgyny: Hyper Androgyny (2)

To continue with the previous topic Androgyny: Hyper Androgyny (1), I will like to share the details of certain hyper androgynous styles including Rethought tees, Oversized white shirts, Slim-fits, Boyfriend jeans, Denim minishorts, Knits, Outerwear cardigans, Graphic digital prints, and the Slacks.

Rethought tees

• Tees have a worn-down feel

• Girls’ tees are cropped or threaded

• Boys and girls wear oversized tees as dresses with tights or skinny pants

 

Oversized white shirts

• Both for guys and girls

• Paired with slim bottoms such as tapered denim or leggings for a more dramatic look

• Mostly oversized and/or elongated classic evening shirts, sometimes reworked

 

Slim-fits

• Leggings both for guys and girls

• Jeggings are also very popular, as are cycling shorts – styled with a contrasting, more constructed top

• One-colour tights in natural somber colours work as an optional pant and less as hosiery for this look

• Denim is super-skinny and has little or no detailing

 

Boyfriend jeans update

• The boyfriend jean is still huge, rolled-up and seen most often in a classic darker marine wash

• Girls opt for biker styling

• Double-denim is key

 

Denim minishorts

• Regular-fit denim shorts

• Mid-leg length and rolled upUnisex denim fit, short version

• Mid- to light-blue washes

• Grungy, distressed options

 

Knits

• Knits are oversized and cosy

• Worn and torn with intentional texturised distressed detailing

• Patches are very important and so is transparency in the yarns

• Bleach and tie-dye give a sense of authenticity and personalisation

 

Outerwear cardigans

• Oversized cardigans work for both girls and boys

• Cable knits are very important

• Oversized collar shapes make knits a good look for optional outerwear

 

Graphic digital prints

• Prints are digital and repeated, either all-over or in large segments

• Patterns are made with a collage-like style by cutting up and repositioning photorealistic imagery

• Natural prints are popular, either photorealistic or derived from natural motifs

 

Slacks update

• Slacks are popular for both genders

• Pleating and added volume adds a little drama to the simpler tops such as a classic white tee or a cropped top

• Volume is important in both pants and shorts, creating a loose-fitting, relaxed look

• Pants are waist-high

 

Reference: Wgsn.com. (2009). Trend track: hyper androgyny. [online] Available at: https://www.wgsn.com/content/board_viewer/#/132594/page/1 [Accessed 5 Nov. 2016].

Androgyny: Hyper Androgyny (1)

With a wink to the mid-90s, a new wave of unisex styling is currently being seen on the streets of lower Manhattan and in the young neigbourhoods of Brooklyn, New York.

Girls are inspired by the ruggedness of punk and grunge silhouettes and boys reply by using soft materials and a layered pyjama-like styling. Together they merge into a non-gendered direction where boys and girls flaunt the same items, reworking them to fit their personal taste, yet keeping the same ethereal attitude.

The silhouettes are thin, with mostly tight-fitting skinny bottoms and fluid, elongated tops. Simple lines and basic items are rethought, such as a simple men’s shirt. T-shirts are very important, either washed-out, threaded or in trompe l’oeil frail materials. Large sectional prints on tees and tanks show digitised nature-inspired motifs such as clouds, trees and what look like micro-organisms under the lens.

There is a raw edge to the styling. This lies in the untreated materials and the DIY destructed finishes. Most garments are unisex – we’ve already been seeing lots of “boyfriend-borrowed” styles for girls, but guys are also borrowing from the girls, opting for cosy knits and plunging-neckline tees.

 

To be continued…

Reference: Wgsn.com. (2009). Trend track: hyper androgyny. [online] Available at: https://www.wgsn.com/content/board_viewer/#/132594/page/1 [Accessed 6 Nov. 2016].