OVERATED ICONS

Some celebrities are just too hyped up for their own good. Heres a few people that I think have passed their sell by date in regards to being "fashion icons" and have became a bit same old

KATE MIDDLETON

Although I LOVE Kate Middleton, I think her style is ridiculously overrated. I appreciate that as a Royal she cant be rocking up in a T shirt dress and Knee High boots but her colour palettes, fit and  styling is all very been there done that and hardly worth such a huge hype that she receives. With "fashion icons" I want them to be people with a different narrative and viewpoint and twist on trends and I feel that Kate's style is just very repetitive. 

KYLIE JENNER

Kylie Jenner is always dressed to impress and can make a simple T shirt dress look incredible. However I feel as if she's hit her limits with style and is just regurgitating the same looks. Theres only so many times you can dress up a t shirt dress until people think...whats next? I'm not writing Kylie off as I think she has potential I just think her stylist needs to go back to the drawing board.

VICTORIA BECKHAM

This may be a controversial one as Victoria Beckham IS rightfully a fashion icon. She's known for serving serious looks everywhere from the streets to major events. However is it just me that think its boring? Constant shades of black, similar hem lines and fits theres only so much black you can take it til it just becomes...meh.

SHAUN EVANS

HOW WE BUY INTO PEOPLE

"It's almost equally as much about who you are and how you present yourself to the client as is what you are actually presenting". Was a thought brought to the table by one of my lecturers and I couldn't agree more. This isn't to say that if you aren't wearing louboutins and a full face of makeup then you'll be told to go choke, but rather how you present yourself through body language, personality and making that special connection.

In a way the extent that we buy into other people is ridiculous. Not to say I'm not a victim of this myself but when conducting primary research for a previous project my group asked various ivy park customers why they were buying the range and nearly all said for the sheer fact of Beyonce herself! Companies realise this and hence the boom in celebrity endorsements, I have no interest in buying scented candles but get Rihanna or Nicki Minaj to endorse them and I'll have two!!

Needless to say the fashion industry is more competitive any other so being able to stand out is key. People buy into other people. People buy into credibility and likability. If two people were to present the same idea you'd obviously pick the guy that made eye contact, smiled and showed a sense of interest and passion rather than the man that looked like he couldn't wait to get the pitch over with and stared at the ground the entire time. Taking time to make sure your personality is translated into presentations and your overall first impressions is vital and I feel that this is something I want to progress further and further through the degree via the presentation opportunities.

SHAUN EVANS

IS PHOTOGRAPHY DEAD?

In a recent Business of Fashion article Tim blank and Nick Knight discussed creativity in a connected world and voiced many through provoking ideas. One of particular interest to me being Nick Knights remark, "I think photography is dead. I think photography stopped years ago and we shouldn’t try and hold back a new medium by defining it with old terms." This thought had never crossed my mind until I came across this interview. Knight goes on to explain how photography is becoming saturated, people can whip out their iPhones and take a snap and be called a photographer. 

Although I am a fan of Knights photography I feel as if his attitude came across very snobby and elitist throughout the interview. Almost as if that you must have certain qualifications and equipment before he will class you as on his level as an artist, whereas I couldn't disagree more.  I feel that our views should move on as time and technology does and that a lot of the time lo-fi and unconventional low quality shoots are the most effective. Many campaigns have even aimed to make their shoots more lo fi and amateur through post production which I feel helps the brand feel relatable and at a level that resonates with the mass rather than the elite. 

Balenciaga's fall winter 2017 campaign features models in a make shift office with a grainy resolution to the camera quality thats clearly intended. 

SHAUN EVANS

TREND ALERT: NIPPLES!

SHAUN EVANS

QUEENS OF ACTIVE WEAR

Active is a bring trend at the moment, wearing typically gym and excercise intended clothing for every day wear has never looked so good. Heres my top 3 celebrities that in my opinion are SLAYING this trend.  

GIGI HADID

Gigi is known for her looks but her active/ sports wear looks lately are a favourite of mine. Her looks are always flawless from head to toe and whether she is actually going to the gym or just going from casting to casting she pulls of the active trend off perfectly. I love how she styles the side popper trousers as I feel it gives a really edgy vibe and different perspective to how its normally styled.

Of course Rihanna has to be included, she nails every trend and even if whats she's wearing isn't a trend it soon will be. I love how she dresses up track pants with heels and she was actually one of the first celebs to do so. Her swagger and confidence dresses up her chill active wear even further and turns even the simplest pink track suit that looks like it could be found in H&M into an utter LOOK.

Although Rihanna slays everything she wears, the true queen of the active trend has to be Kim Kardashian. Her looks are styled to look so effortless that it makes them look even better and her unbothered, unfazed attitude makes them even more amazing. With muted tones Kim manages to make a statement with the active trend without really doing anything at all. Also the lacey bodysuit with the adidas track pants has been emulated by many as she really is a true style icon. 

SHAUN EVANS

 

BACK TO BLACK

                                                                                         

Oh, you're a model, whats your agency, Instagram? Bringing our black project to an end we had to generate our photoshoot imagery into pieces of promotional material. A piece of print, advert and piece of promotional material. I chose to create an Article on The hidden beauty Standards on male modelling, a fenty beauty advert and album cover. These were presented to each seminar group and we were left with the chance to add post it notes to each persons work with compliments or constructive criticism if we felt fit. 

For my article I of course jumped at the chance to be conceited af and feature myself on a 2 page spread. I looked at the obvious magazines like Vogue and Dazed and also dabbled into less traditional prints like fanzines and brandzines. I loved both the traditional Vogue article spreads as well as the 'rougher' more intimate layouts of fanzines. I wanted to create a hybrid of the both and I feel that I achieved this with the typography and layout being very vogue-esque whilst choosing a more rough and 'free hand' scribble on the first page to decorate and dim, dingy and urban image to accompany this and I actually think the contrast looks really cool and makes each element pop. The subject was the hidden beauty standards of male modelling. By this I meant that everyone is allll over female beauty standards in the fashion industry explaining the pressures it has on everyday women and teenagers and how stretch marks need to be shown and much less airbrushing etc but the impact on men never seems to be brought up. The fact that every single man featured in magazines has the clearest skin, ripped abs and chiseled jaw. If I was to actually write the article it would go on to expose male beauty standards and how these need to be addressed especially in the modelling world. For this I was given two post its by my peers one saying "strong message" and the other "well presented with a clear theme".

I decided to focus my advert on Bad Gal RiRi herself and promote her new Fenty Beauty makeup range. I manipulated the image of the hand seen in the previous post for this ad, I'd love to say I spent hours carefully tweaking this on photoshop but turns out clicking a few random buttons on Word accidentally achieves this look! This is my favourite outcome as I feel its perfectly on brand for Rihanna and her current campaign (that I'm in love with) and also adds an extra element that she's missing from the campaign. For this I was given post it's saying "appealing to a massively rising brand' and "works well with current brand image and could see this being in her actual campaign". 

For my final outcome I created an album cover. I used the hand image as the background layered with the album title "Black on Black" and an image of the 'artist' Kay Laws on top in the centre. I looove the outcome of this due to it's current Life Of Pablo vibes and professional feel.

This has been my favourite project to date due to the complete openness of the brief we could take pictures of WHATEVER make outcomes of WHATEVER and could present them HOWEVER we wanted. I feel like the openers allowed people to really express themselves and their style and show what they wanna show to the world and their point of view. I really hope such open and expressive briefs continue.

SHAUN EVANS

ALL BLACK ERRYTHANG

Black. Androgyny. Emo as fuck.  Continuing the black theme we were tasked to create a photo shoot about our colour theme in pairs. Having the colour black it would be easy to follow typical stereotypes and create a emo dark dingy shoot in about 5 minutes with little thought. However we wanted to challenge this and think a lil outside the box. We thought what can we say about black thats never really translated in previous fashion texts...the fact that black is so unisex and diverse.

To translate this message we wanted to play with the idea of androgyny and how black can be wore to a boujee red carpet event or to nip down to the shop and still look cool af. We tried to translate this through choosing a street style casual look for me in black and a more dressed up chic outfit for Kay. I think this is evident that we achieved this not only through the clothing choices but also the photography. Kay's image is taken from beneath her showing she's the shit in her fur coat and better than you next to my chilled out pose looked bored and over it af. 

Makeup wise we went for a simple theme of black (obviously) and translated what we had seen from research that other looks people had done to convey androgyny through makeup. We found it quite cool how although i had lots of strange black eyeshadow on it didn't look that out of the ordinary and actually gave off a cool individual vibe and style.

We were soo pleased with the outcomes and these are 3 of our faves. The filter from VSCO cam (which baffles me I have no clue how to work it) adds an extra touch and makes it look like its straight out of a UO advert to us.

SHAUN EVANS

BLACK IS THE NEW BLACK

Rough Trade Store, Nottingham. 

I've decided to create a blog to accompany the start of my new adventure at Uni! Starting the 22nd of September I moved to Nottingham to pursue my love of fashion further and study a Fashion Communication and Promotion degree at NTU. So.. what better way to kick things off than to have a chat about the first assignment I have been set and my initial responses. We have been tasked to explore the different moods, connotations and attributes to a specific colour, I was assigned with the colour black. BLACK. The drabbest boring colour there is, I thought I'd have to be researching goths and dark, minimal and boring aesthetics all week. However after just initial research and photo taking I have already discovered the hidden moods, feelings and fascination with the colour black.

Billboard, Nottingham.

As soon as we were assigned our colours I decided the best way to gain inspiration for my project was to explore Nottingham and find architecture, billboards and ANYTHING black (basically an excuse to do some shopping). Despite the weird looks I got from taking pictures outside stores and of random ashtrays it was a good experience as I not only got to delve deeper into my new temporary city residence but also really understood the diversity of the colour black. On one hand black was being used to promote a sleek and minimal aesthetic for stores like Zara and 18montrose and then it was creating serious urban soho LDN vibes with stores like Mimm and Rough Trade.

Mounted Ashtray, Nottingham. 

For many of the places I found that black was used as the back drop for the main attraction for example graffiti artwork or sticker, collage etc however its with the use of black that makes the main feature so impactful. If the graffiti style graphics of the Mimm store were on a white or coloured background they would have no where NEAR the same impact as the black already creates an urban, street vibe and creates the sleek, effortless mood.

Mimm Store, Nottingham. 

I also noticed something that I never really picked up on before which makes me sound like a complete ignorant idiot but it was the extent to how gender neutral the colour black is. From the outside of most of the store fronts I visited that were black it was hard to even tell what gender the shop was targeted at which is a pretty clever (but most likely unintentional) marketing strategy as unisex clothing is v in trend at the moment and mixing and matching opposite gendered clothing isn't as taboo and unheard of as once before and rather more in fashion than not!

SHAUN EVANS