For my final collection I have decided to use India as my inspiration. I think this theme works well with the colour brief I am working on and also allows me to reference ethical issues. I have spent the weekend working on my mood board so I can start my designs next week. I want to have lots of digital work in my portfolio so I have done the mood board on Photoshop including some illustrations based on Henna tattoos which were done In Illustrator. This took me much longer to do than it would have done by hand as I am not very familiar with Photoshop however I glad I put the hours in as I now feel more confident using the programme. Overall I am very pleased with the result and think it looks more professional than some of the other mood boards I have created by hand.

Am I a brand?

After today's PPRD Lesson I was have been thinking more about my own creative philosophy and how I would like to present myself to future employers. When I was working at the weekend (in a cafe) I took over some cofees to a girl who was showing her father her portfolio. I asked her if she was a fashion student and she said she was a fashion designer (a little embarrassing!) She said she had just returned home after doing some work for Adidas. She let me have a look through her portfolio and it looked very professional and every page had her name in a logo/typeface in the corner. It also was very selective and was quite small. After looking through her work when I start putting together my portfolio I will consider having it in A4 file as I think it looks more professional. I am also going to spend some time coming up with typeface that I feel communicates my 'brand'
I also started thinking about how I am going to set myself apart from all the other graduates and think that setting up another blog that shows my work and CV would also be a good idea.
Ontop of that I am also back on the case with trying to find a work placement for next year

Celebrity Fashion Designers

We have been asked to comment on current fashion related issues and the first thing that came to my mind was Celebrities designing for high-street retailers. Maybe it because the prospect of competing with thousands of students shortly is scare enough but now I have to compete with the like of Kate Moss and Emma Watson who have not spent the last two years working really hard doing a degree! When doing a work placement at New Look I was working with the girl who designed the Lilly Allen collection. Lilly Allen was asked to bring in 10 of her favourite dresses and then New Looks in house designers designed the collection from there. I think that people believe that the celebrities have a much more creative input than they do. I understand why it sells because essentially when a person buys a Kate Moss dress they are trying to buy into the 'Kate Moss lifestyle'. However I do think its a shame that the talented and hard working designers are not enough for our celebrity obsesses culture.
Despite the continued success of these collections Richard Bradbury the managing directer of River Island has said 'We don't do the celebrity thing. I think its a bit of an insult, basically your saying to your design studio your not coming up with interesting enough stuff lets hire a celeb' I have however seen River Island collections from students scouted at Graduate fashion.