IDEAS BRIEF - MOOD BOARD

This week in one of my seminars we focused on photoshop to create mood boards for our ideas brief. I will be posted a blog shortly telling you all about the ideas brief me and my group have been working on over the last couple of weeks. I have used photoshop quite a few times before so I feel very comfortable using it in the seminars. We were set the task of creating a mood board for either our big idea, our outcome or just everything together. I chose to make one on the whole of our project as I wanted to tell a story through the board so the viewer could understand the history, meaning, evidence and outcome to our work. I started by going back to the images we used in our trend story as it was this work that started off our idea and it was great evidence for the point I am trying to make. Our big idea is 'Adopt the romance trend and change the current perception that it is only for females'. Our whole idea is about romance refashioned; transcending gender, to show romance is for all genders as it's a lot more prominent in womens fashion and lifestyle.

I wanted to use images from the past as evidence that this has been happening forever and its finally time for us to change this perception. I used a photo of a man and women in the 80's, the women wearing a big red dress with revealing features and strappy red heels. From my research in the last project I found that red is seen as the most romantic colour and her skin is quite revealed and this can be seen as seductive, whereas the man stood behind her is in a traditional full black and white suit. All of his body covered and he wears monochrome colours which don't give very romantic connotations. I also featured a photo from the 90's which again shows the difference between men and womens clothing in history. The women wears a silk slip dress whilst the man wears a formal shirt and trousers, even when the whole picture is in black and white it is clear to see the difference between the way they dress, the women has a revealed chest and wearing silk which is associated with lingerie.

Moving on from the history I added some photos of current men and womens fashion to show how this difference is still present. I used a photo of one of my friends before a night out, she's wearing a white dress, colour associated with weddings, which has a love heart neck line, revealing her chest and the body con fit revealing all of her curves and body shape. Whereas a males night outfit would be much like the image next to it of the body taking a photo in the mirror, full length jeans or trousers and a tshirt or jumper, with not much colour. Another one of my favourite photos is of Kylie Jenners outfit, this was posted in August this year. She's wearing a loose fitted dress with a vintage corset cupping her boobs and synching her waist to give her an hour glass figure men desire. The dress is patterned with pink flowers, a romantic colour and a traditional romantic gift, she also accessories with a pink mini bag. I also included Justin and Hailey Biebers recent wedding photo as this clearly shows the difference between the genders fashion as on their wedding day, the most romantic day of their lives, the women wear a lace or silk white dress, available in so many different styles for them to chose between whereas men have limited choice with a basic suit, and it has been this way for all of time as its seen as traditional. It was so easy for me to find images of different womens fashion which I felt was romantic but for men they all appeared the same; monochrome, suits, tshirts, jeans and trousers, proving that women have so much more variety. I placed all of the images I felt contrasted and showed the differences to one another best next to each other so that it was clear on my intensions and the evidence is clear.

Then I added evidence from our store research of how women are given more romantic options to men. I started with some images of the accessories I found in Topshop, one of them being a pair of red heart earrings, as traditional romantic as you can get and a hair clip which says 'love' in pearls, definitely a romantic word and pearls are a delicate and fragile so it gives quite a romantic feel. I also featured a top I found in there which was a pearl satin material, with a bow in the back and love heart neck line I felt it was very traditional romance. I then went into Topman to see if I could find anything romantic and I couldn't it was full of very dull coloured clothes and dark interior with very basic accessories, therefore I included a photo of the over Topman store because I felt this gives you the exact vide of what all the clothes are like, very dark and plain, nothing compared to what was in Topshop for women.

Whilst looking through the shops I also noticed the packaging differences between the men and womens perfumes and aftershave, I included a bottle of Ariana Grandes new perfume bottle, its all pink and comes in a silicone cover shaped as a heart, the colour and shape have clear romantic connotations, whereas the mens were all in simple rectangular or cylinder bottles and all lacked colour, I included two examples one from Dior and one from Carolina Herrera, to huge designer brands who still continue to lack inspiration in their aftershave bottles. The most powerful image is the one of the Dior aftershaves as it shows a whole collection however you can barely tell a difference between them, they are all the same shapes and colours, whereas if you looked at a womens collection they would all have a variety of details.

For our ideas project we were given a shop and an outcome to create along side our previous trend story, we were given Selfridges and Space, so in the bottom corner I dedicated the space to images of our outcome. I started with images of both the London and the Birmingham Selfridges stores as we want our idea to be carried out in all of their stores and not just exclusive the one of them. The next images were of spaces within Selfridges as this will be where our outcome will take place. The photos of the rails were to show that our outcome will feature a variety of clothing on the clothing rails for everyone, I chose the one of the rails going up and down to show how the clothing is for anyone including even different heights. The two photos of the rails contrast with one another as one has quite formal clothing and the other has more edgy out there clothing hung up, this again showing how we will provide clothing for all. The next images of the Selfridges bags are to show that its a shopping experience and the one above of the girl carrying all of the bags was again to show that its a shopping experience but also as she is holding many bags from all different brands links back to Selfridges as they hold so many different brands which can suit all. The final image is of the two girls shopping together is to show that we want the experience to be one you can share with your loved ones, whether that be your partner, friend or family its for all types of romance to enjoy.

The final thing I added was two colour palettes, I created this using Adobe colour wheel. I made one to show womens fashion colour palette and one for men. I create this by dropping in an image and then picking out the key colours I thought best represented each gender. For womens fashion I used the image of Kylie Jenners floral dress and the colours that came from this were all different shades pf pink and cream, very traditional romantic colours. For the mens colour palette I used the photo of the boy taking a mirror photo and the colour wheel came out so much darker and dirtier than the womens, with blues, greens and greys throughout there is nothing romantic about this colour palette especially compared to the womens.

The overall aim of the mood board was to show the comparison between men and womens fashion with romance being the aim and I feel I have clearly depicted the differences and given evidence as to why we believe this is something which needs highlighting and changing.