French Connection: Range Review autumn/winter 09

For the past couple of months i have been working more hours at my part time job at French connection in Manchester and i have been really enjoying myself. Becoming more involved in the way the company works and in particular finding out about the advertising and visual merchandising side to the company. i recently took part in a regional walk through of the store, where by store managers come from all over the northern sector of the country to see how our store has been visually laid out to inspire customer purchases and interest in the current season items. Getting there early hours Friday morning to prep clothes so the store was looking at its best was tiring but worth it. getting to join in on the walk through and listen to the head visual merchandiser for the company on why items where placed, folded and hung in specific ways to attract customers into the store and also to entice them to look at other sections within the store.

Visual merchandising really interests me and i feel privileged to work for a company where by i am able to get involved with events like this and am able to further my visual merchandising knowledge and experience. Speaking to my manager she has agreed to get me involved with more aspects of visual merchandising within the store, which allows me to use knowledge i have gained on my D&AD course about how imagery, design and layout can sell a product and/or reveal/convey a message.

Previous examples of how French Connection use Visual merchandising to create beautiful and fashion forward window displays to enhance their brand are shown above.

Sound and Vision.

As well as visiting the Beaton exhibition i also visited the Sound and Vision exhibition at the National Conservation Centre. Although i am a big fan of photography the work here didn't really appeal to me. It was a very different style of exhibition to the one i had been to at the Walker gallery. The theme was based around bands who had played in Liverpool in the 70's and 80's during the punk/rock period and were photographed by Francesco Mellina. Music played throughout the exhibition of bands that were featured and so a very different atmosphere was given as soon as you walked in the room. Again no photography was allowed but even though the style of work wasn't my cup of tea i managed to find interesting aspects to the work there. Particularly the way fashion, music and photographed had been encorporated into one exhibition was very interesting and since i have a keen interest in fashion it was strange to see the influences that this era still has on the fashion world today. The use of leather within clothing, blazers, deep set eye makeup and messy hair; these were all aspects i picked up from Francesco's work that can be related to fashion trends today. It made me realise just how influential previous eras are within fashion today. Even though i am constantly reading and hearing comments such as "new trends are so...80's and that dress has definately got a 40's style to it", it has never been completely clear to me how much we rely on the years gone by to create the fashion we know today.

Seeing Francesco Mellina's work also made me realise that even though your looking at a piece of work, a photograph, poster, magazine or even book cover that you don't neccesarily like, you should never dismiss it straight away, there could be an underlying aspect of that piece of work which directly links to your interests. You definately learn something new everyday.

Cecil Beaton portraits and my trip to the POOL.

Ok... so I am finally completely up and running with my blog and I have started to prepare myself for the stressful year ahead! for the past couple of months I have spent my time working and I have also been on a couple of holidays, spending time with the girls in Aiya Napa and then visiting spain with my family. Now I'm home i thought it was time to visit some exhibitions and re-ignite my creativity.

On TUESDAY 18TH AUGUST I went to Liverpool (the POOL) with Jemma, Gemma and Anna.

A range of Cecil Beaton portraits were being displayed at the Walker Art Gallery, at first I was going to Liverpool to see my friends and just collect information in preparation for my journal in the upcoming year, I liked Cecil Beaton's work and I knew I would like the photographs but I wasn't expecting to take as much interest in the images as i did. what interested me was that Beaton didn't only take photographs of the "famous" people of his time but also royal's and politically influential people also, I particularly liked his image of queen elizabeth and also of winston churchill. unfortunately when I was in the exhibition I was unable to take photographs. (not that I knew that initially and went around taking photographs, only to be told by the security guard i wasn't allowed...ooops.) The way Beaton has photographed all of his subjects particularly that of queen Elizabeth and Winston Churchill is different to what I was expecting to see from a portrait, although they are clearly staged the atmosphere around the subject is a natural setting and makes you feel like you are given a view of the person themselves and their life instead of just an image of them.

Another favorite of mine was this of Julie Andrews, the use of the mirror to show her reflection is creative and different to many of his other works, you don't get the basic face on view you would expect to find in a portrait, there is a playful side to it which is what I like the most about the image.

While I was on the way out there was also a small selection of work from Zoe, of Zoe photography, she had used Cecil Beaton as her inspiration and taken images similar to his. I liked the way she had made associations with his work and when I came home I looked at other portraiture work she had done on her website.

http://zoephotography.co.uk/

I really like the style of her work and it was good to see how looking at past creatives can really influence a photographers style today.

My First Blog.

Hello everyone... FINALLY got my blog up and running, Im currently browsing around and getting used to it all and will be adding more posts about my summer SOON...