LOUNGEWEAR AS OUTERWEAR

Recently over the past couple of weeks, I have noticed that comfy, indoor loungewear has made its way onto the streets and looks as trendy and fashionable as ever. I wouldn't have dreamed of going out the house in my tracksuit bottoms or loungewear before but it is becoming more and more popular and the fad is almost becoming a trend itself. Celebrities have been spotted rocking the trends and promoting the popular brands that stock the 'trendy tracksuits' on their social medias. Celebrities such as Samantha Faires, Megan Mckenna and Kady Mcdermot (and thats just to name a few!) seem to be loving this comfy trend. It seems very popular amongst the reality TV stars who make the typical, once 'chavy' tracksuit almost glamorous looking.

Megan Mckenna seems that obsessed that she has recently come out with her very own 'Sports Luxe' range on misspap. Im not entirely sure if I personally trust all of these celebrity endorsements but that is a whole other blog post!

Thankyou for reading, 

Love from Georgia

xxx

NOTTINGHAM CONTEMPORARY- FOXP2

I finally got the chance to go and visit the Nottingham Contemporary earlier this week and saw the latest exhibition 'FOXP2' by Marguerite Humeau. I was pleasantly surprised at how interesting I found it. It was quite empty when we went so we were lucky enough to have a lovely lady who talked us through the exhibition and explained what it was all about. The exhibition was based around a mutation of a gene called FOXP2. This is the crucial 2% difference in our DNA between us humans and other animals such as chimpanzees. 98% of human and chimpanzee DNA is actually the same which I didn't know!

When we first entered the exhibition we were standing in a pitch black walkway with very strange sounds playing in our ears! I was a bit confused as to what was going on initially until I learnt more about it. It was essentially a synthetic voice beatboxing the origins of language, joined by 108 billion homo sapiens. This was probably my least favourite part of the exhibition as it was a little bit spooky and slightly bizarre. 

The rest of the exhibition was much brighter and covered in my favourite blush pink colour- definitely one of the prettiest exhibitions I've ever seen! I really liked the story and meanings behind the work in this room. All of the elephant sculptures were all facing the matriarch elephant 'Echo' who was slowly passing away. Each sculpture/elephant were reacting to this through different ways and emotions. For example 'Felicie' was a female elephant engineered to be self-destructive by getting drunk. Elephants actually get drunk with ethanol that comes from masala fruit- I found this so bizarre! The way it was shown was probably my favourite part of the exhibition as parts of ethanol were dropped into the water pump, this was pumping over and over whilst sounds were being played that the elephants would have made. I thought this was a really unique and clever way to show the different emotions. Another example of this is the elephant 'Enid' who was engineered to cry out of sadness. The mixture in this had depressant hormones mixed with three real drops of elephant tears which were sourced from a Thai zoo. 

Another really interesting part of the whole exhibition was the beautifully coloured carpet itself. The pink carpet was dyed with pigments created from chemical components of the human body. Overall, I really enjoyed finding out about this exhibition and having a tour guide really helped us understand what was actually going on! I would 100% recommend checking it out if you're ever in Nottingham.

Thankyou for reading,

Love from Georgia

xxx

SARAH MOON 1983- MORGAN

For one of my uni briefs, we were each given an image we had to analyse. I was given Sarah Moon's 1983 image called 'Morgan'. At first I really didn't like my image as it wasn't a particularly pretty or girly photograph which I would usually much enjoy working with! However, the more I researched into it and found out about my image, the more I began to like it. I wanted to share with you what I found out about this image and to show just how important doing lots of research is! I would have never got into this brief and would have had nothing to write about my image if I didn't research it more! As a bit of background history on Sarah Moon, she was originally a model but she eventually changed to taking images of fashion photography as that was clearly a passion of hers.

 

The photograph shows an image within an image. As a viewer, I was instantly drawn into the small, brighter frame which the little girl was standing in. There is a slight focus on the rough, unpainted edge of the drop which the little girl seems contained within, however she equally looks like she is on the verge of stepping out of that frame and world and back into reality. There is a huge contrast between the two different worlds with the peaceful, natural forest against the dull, broken down buildings and derelict streets. There is a sense of loneliness in the image as both places feel so empty, this leaves me wondering what has happened or what the little girl is thinking so intensely about.

This colour isolated image with the greyscale effect initially scared me as it had a slight sinister look to it. I also think that the image could have a shocking and more powerful effect on viewers as a young innocent child is featured alone in an almost abandoned looking street. She doesn’t seem to be a typical happy child and looks like she has a lot on her mind which intrigues viewers as they want to know more.

I also feel like this photograph related well to fairy tales as I discovered that this visual text was Sarah Moons way of using photography to translate the tale of little red riding hood into a modern, urban context. This then reminded me of a book I studied at A-level called ‘The Bloody Chamber’. Particular stories in this book such as ‘Wolf Alice’ and ‘Werewolf’ borrow themes from Red Riding Hood, just like this photograph seems to. These stories also have a disturbing yet intriguing twist to them, the little girls aren’t always the victims and they don’t always need to rely on the typical woodcutter to come and save them, this child in the image is on her own and seems to be content yet deep in thought. Further researching also lead me onto Anne Ikhlef’s 1985 film ‘La veritable historie du chaperon rouge’ which was supposed to be the ‘real’ story of Little Red Riding Hood, which yet again had a twist.

The little girls outfit and appearance reminds me of Red Riding hood with her dark brown windswept bob and the short cape blowing behind her over the top of her tartan dress. This was also not the typical clothing worn by children in the 1980s when this image was produced. Brighter colours were worn and capes were not used. This would have been quite a shocking, different photograph to look at and I don’t think many people would have understood it if they didn’t look into the meaning behind it more.

There is a lot of repetition within this image with the shapes of the pillars, walls and doorframes in the buildings matching and flowing the same way as the tree trunks and branches in the forest. The whole image seems to flow into one even though they are complete opposite places. This makes the photograph slightly unclear, viewers have to look closely to notice the difference and it draws them in well.

The backgrounds in Sarah Moon’s photograph have a blurred, slight overlapped look to them with the busy backgrounds of trees and rows of buildings. This reminded me of graphic designer Hannah Guy’s work which I looked at for A- level. Hannah Guy took photographs of trees 360 degrees all the way around it to give the overall grey-scale images a 3-D, blurred effect. I felt like this had a very similar look to the forest image contained within the smaller frame. This effect has a mysterious feel to it, adding to the mystery of the little girl and what she is doing. The stories and images are unclear. Usually trees and nature have positive, peaceful, free connotations but this image is almost the opposite to that with the empty, urban alley being a distraction from it.

Thankyou for reading, 

Love from Georgia

xxx

Photo credit: google images

ELSIE MAGAZINE

I recently attended a talk by Les Jones all about his amazing magazine 'ELSIE'. I haven't listened to such an interesting and inspiring person in a long time! His whole idea seemed to be taking a whole 'sideways' look on the world. He seemed to love the idea of having his own creative freedom with no one looking over his shoulder or controlling him. He found it sad how all of the popular, mainstream magazines out there at the moment are all so similar, this is something I haven't really noticed until now. All of the independent magazines like ELSIE is where I want to start getting my inspiration from instead of following the crowd and reading the usual girly, fashion magazines that I unfortunately tend to stick to.

ELSIE was set up five years ago in 2011 by Les, he had no agenda, no message to get across, no defined demographic and no one to try and please and I loved that! He did it for him and because he wanted to. Whilst listening to him talk I began to notice what a funny guy he was! His stories were so interesting and eventful. One story in particular stood out to me where he completely put all of his faith in human nature and let his journey unfold naturally with the midset of 'do stuff and other stuff will happen'. He wrote down lots of different countries and put them in a hat for his son to pick one out. He then threw a dart at the map of Poland and ended up in Miechow which was a tiny, quiet town. His stories from here were so interesting from being in the local newspaper to meeting the president of the town! Not only did he have an amazing journey and built friendships with the most unlikely of people, but he also produced brilliant content for his completely unique magazine. He added humour to everything and kept me laughing throughout his talk. His trip is documented in a weird and wonderful way in ELSIE issue #1 which I will definitely be getting my hands on soon!

Another wacky thing Les told us about is his obsession with picking up random pieces of paper off the floor as he is always so curious, I love how he is fascinated with such mundane objects, he seems to make everything interesting. He showed us a few examples through his presentation of shopping lists, letters and drawings which were all hilarious but interesting at the same time, it really made me wonder who these useless pieces of paper once belonged to. From discarded gloves to Flattened face cans, Les Jones has it all in his crazy magazines and I cannot wait to get my hands on them! I definitely recommend getting your hands on ELSIE magazine as he only makes 1000 of each copy, they are all unique and completely done by Les himself, no one else!

Thankyou for reading, 

Love from Georgia

xxx

'THE TALE OF THOMAS BURBERRY' 2016 FESTIVE ADVERT

I feel like I have been living under a rock whilst being at uni! I keep missing out on all of the new adverts brought out around Christmas. I really used to take adverts for granted in between my favourite TV programmes, I saw them as a nuisance but since starting FCP I have been looking at advertisements in a whole different light! In a seminar earlier on today we were looking into the messages behind recent adverts. The new Burberry advert stood out to me in particular as it was so different to anything I have seen before! It was to celebrate their 160th anniversary so it had to be something special!

The three and a half minute clip was more like a film trailer, the special short film told a story and kept people interested and engaged, it definitely left me wanting more! It shows the interesting backstory and history behind Burberry and celebrated the life of its founder. In a way, it also celebrated the trench coat itself, showing the history of that too. It almost makes a global family through advertising it, we all know and love a classic trench coat and we all know Burberry is the place to go to to get one!

I also thought the way they showed the clothing in the clip was really clever as it was a modern season shown in a historical context which is really different to every other advert out there at the moment and was a good risk to take! They used popular, professional actors like Sienna Miller, Lily James, Dominic West and Domhnall Gleeson which made it seem like it was a new film coming to cinemas soon!

I definitely think this advert has beat John Lewis this year! Let me know what you thought about it.

Thankyou for reading,

Love from Georgia

xxx