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

LONDON TRIP

Welcome back! 

We recently had a trip to London on my course to try and find take some retail and street style photography on our trends that were given to us previously. My group luckily got 'frilled finish' as our trend which was definitely one of the more interesting, girly and easiest ones for me to get! We visited a few places in London attempting to find lots of images of frills. It wasn't as easy as we initially thought, particularly when gathering street style photographs as everyone seemed to be wrapped up in their winter coats! We did however, manage to get a good bunch of retail images in shops and tried our best with the street style ones.  We were in a group of four with one person taking the photographs and the other three helping and searching for frills too!

Below are a few of my favourite images collected from retail stores from both high end and high street brands.

Below are the images we collected from our street style photography.

One thing we did notice when looking for street style frills was the idea that they were either unexpected- for example on fabrics such as leather (making a statement) or were worn by middle ages ladies or younger mothers who didn't really think into what they were wearing as much and just wore it for practicality or comfort. The lady above is a prime example of this. After having a brief chat with her we soon found out she had recently had a baby. She also looked shocked and almost looked herself up and down when we asked to check and see what she was actually wearing! Her patterned dress had small frills around the top whilst the oversized cardigan (or shawl) had large oversized frills, we decided that she was definitely a 'yummy mummy' in terms of consumer tribes.

I found this a very interesting look to talk about. This woman clearly hasn't put any thought into her outfit but looks so confident at the same time. Her skirt was slightly marked and her shoes clearly didn't go but she really did not care! Although this wasn't really the look we were searching for, it was still very interesting to have this photograph and compare it to others we had collected.

I find this image a bit more relatable to our trend as it features almost unexpected frills. You don't usually see feminine frills used in a strong, masculine material such as leather so this was quite an interesting image to talk about.

I feel as if our frilled trend can relate massively to dance and ballet in particular. 

We found frills in architecture and interiors too which we want to all explore more within our work and research.

I hope you enjoyed my brief photo series of my day trip to London! I'm sure there will be many more trips to come!

Thankyou for reading, 

Love from Georgia

xxx

MARSEILLE

The last day was a bit more of a chilled day. We started off by looking in some French shopping malls (yet again.. to my Dad's dismay) which I found really interesting as I compared to the shopping centres I go to at home. I stumbled across a Birchbox stand in one of the shops (which was a bit like our John Lewis or Debenhams) and I just had to purchase one! (blog post on that soon). Marseille wasn't as exciting as the other places we went to but we definitely tried to make the most out of it!

The buildings were still very pretty to look at especially compared to the ones back in England! Below is a sneak pre-view of the Birchbox stand in the shopping mall!

Later on in the day we decided to go and visit a fort and climb up the steps to the top to look at the lovely views.

Inside the fort...

My dad really enjoyed looking at the different boats and yachts all holiday..

I really hoped you enjoyed reading the posts from my cruise! Its a lovely way for me to look back on my holiday and remember exactly what we got up to! I hope to visit lots more places soon and tell you all about them! I will be going to New York in January with my university course which I am SO excited about! Visiting new York is definitely a dream come true and I cannot wait!

Thankyou for reading, 

Love from Georgia

xxx

CANNES

I was excited to do a bit of shopping in Cannes and to my Dad's dismay.. that is exactly what we did! It may not be as pretty or picturesque as Florence or Rome but the shopping was great! I particularly enjoyed Zara (who doesn't love Zara!?) as well as the designer shops and the quirky souvenir shops we walked past. These posts may not be as pretty as Rome or Florence but I still wanted to share with you all what I got up to!

I loved looking at all of the beautiful shop window displays and took photos of my favourites! I was so excited when I saw the one below with vintage designer handbags and unique pieces in but unfortunately it was closed!

As most of you know the Cannes film festival takes place once a year here and we wanted to visit exactly where all of the talented celebrities go to! We enjoyed looking at all of the handprints left by different Actors and Actresses.

Overall Cannes was completely different to the other places we had previously visited but it was nice to look round a more modern town and do a little bit of retail therapy!

Thankyou for reading, 

Love from Georgia

xxx

FLORENCE AND PISA

Our third day started with yet another taxi ride with people from the cruise, this time we stopped off in Florence where we had three hours to look around the beautiful town. I cant even begin to describe how stunning the buildings and surroundings really were but I took lots of photographs to show you all! Florence was probably my favourite town I visited just because of how stunning it really was, I definitely want to re-visit it another day!

I love a good bike and doorframe photograph haha!

I love seeing love locks! They make me so happy even if there is a sign saying no padlocks! haha.

There was so much hidden, beautiful street art in Florence like these paper butterflies and the 'girl with the pearl earing' graffiti.

The second part of our day was spent visiting The Leaning Tower Of Pisa. This was so worth going to see, It really does lean haha! Apparently it is still moving and leaning so god knows where it will be in another few years! Just like the Colosseum- this was soo much more impressive in real life and so worth seeing. Not only is it really interesting to see but its also a beautiful building with great architecture, if I had more time I would have loved to go inside it and climb up it, its supposed to feel so weird.

Of course we had to take the typical 'lets pretend were pushing the tower back up photograph' shown by my mum here haha. It didn't really work out but she gave it a go!

I hope you enjoyed the photographs from Florence and Pisa! There will be more posts to follow from the rest of my cruise.

Thankyou for reading, 

Love from Georgia

xxx