High End VS High Street

In a recent seminar we discussed 'Market Level Translation' with regards to both High-End and High Street brands. 

After a bit of thought, it came to light that there are only so many fashion narratives around, meaning brands are constantly re-using the same stories, just on different market levels.

Repetitive codes. Same messages. 

Just to give a few examples, we have...

Traditional Heritage:

Burberry S/S15

Jack Wills S/S15

Humour & Irony:

Moschino S/S15

River Island S/S12

Romantic & Ethereal:

Chloé S/S15

Jigsaw S/S14

See, the similarities are so obvious!

A small task we were set was to select a pair and identify the common language that unites the two brands. For this, I chose:

Chloé S/S11

Jigsaw S/S

I decided to call this pairing 'Damsel's in Distress' for a number of reasons. Ultimately for both images there is a definite fairytale feel, they both use muted pinks/nudes and give off an element of being lost.

Chloé's campaign in particular came across as quite a dark fairytale, as though the two models are escaping from something or perhaps being chased (the slightly distorted image reflects the movement). Very Alice In Wonderland.

Jigsaw's campaign is therefore the exact opposite. As soon as I laid eyes on this image I thought it was a still from Taylor Swift's 'Love Story' music video, or perhaps a Sherri Hill prom dress photo shoot. There are definite Rapunzel vibes resonating from this image - the model is posing elegantly and the overall colour palette is much lighter and cleaner than Chloé's.

I hope you enjoyed this post! Now I've shown you just how obvious fashion narratives can be you'll start noticing them everywhere!

I spotted this pair whilst browsing online just a second ago:

So ridiculously the same its laughable and a little bit cringe!

Love, Lana Skye x 

Photo Credit: Google Images.

Trend Alert: Geometric Copper

Ever since I arrived at Uni i've been seeing this combination EVERYWHERE, whether it be online or in store.

Two of my flat mates are obsessed, I had to pretty much drag one of them out of H&M a few weeks ago as it was geometric copper central in their home ware section (yes Robyn I'm talking about you).

Personally, its not my cup of tea. It might have something to do with the fact that I only wear silver jewellery so I'm not really attracted to gold tones, but when it comes to decor I'm definitely a more shabby chic kind of girl.

That being said, I get the impression that this trend is going to stick around for a while, I can't leave the flat without seeing it advertised on various social media platforms at the moment. 

Are you a lover or a hater?

Love, Lana Skye x 

Retail Analysis

Hi! If you didn't catch one of my blog posts last week, I focused on the opening task of a project I've been set, this being the second part (I'll link last weeks post down below).

After heightening our understanding of the trend 'strobing', all groups were then briefed on the retail aspect of things. We had to critically analyse how our identified trend had been adopted and communicated by brands and retailers. In more understandable terms, we had to go in store and look on websites to collect our own i.e. primary research, keeping the different market levels in mind:

Value: Collection 2000, Seventeen, Mua...

Mass: Topshop, Benefit, Kiko...

Middle: MAC, Smashbox, Bare Minerals...

High-End: Charlotte Tilbury, NARS, Laura Mercier...

My focus was on the High-End brands. Luckily, I'm a girl who over time has learned not to overthink things and just dive right in. Being confident in yourself is particularly important in the fashion industry because if you aren't then quite frankly you'll go un-noticed. 

The first brand I researched for highlighting products was Charlotte Tilbury.

Sadly, we don't have a CT counter here in Nottingham, but I was adamant that it would be one of the brands I focused on so I contacted one of their senior makeup artists and asked her a few questions. 

Next up, I killed two birds with one stone and looked at brands NARS and Laura Mercier, both of which are stocked in my favourite shop -Space NK. 

I hear a lot of people say they have had bad customer service experiences in there, but I've never noticed it. I simply walked in, introduced myself and what I was doing and the two staff members in store were more than happy to help me out and answer quite a few questions. (Kindness and politeness is all it takes - how could they possibly say no!?).

I'll admit it, I caved and did end up spending quite a lot of money that day, oh well!

Up next, we then had to create a visually appealing Powerpoint presentation showing our findings - this was definitely the toughest part as all 4 of us had to filter down all of the information we had gathered (not the best task when you feel like you've got loads of good stuff to say).

Just to give you a little taster of the theme our presentation took - above is one of our slides which illustrates our colour palette, main image and 3 focus areas with regards to the products we researched. Overall I'm so happy with how the presentation went (even if we didn't get to finish because we still had way to much info ha!)

Stay tuned if you want to see Part 3 of this project which involves Street Style Photography - eek!

Love, Lana Skye x 

Trend Analysis - Strobing: http://lovelanaskye.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/trend-analysis-strobing.html

The Wonderful World of Tiffany & Co.

Tiffany's is an American worldwide luxury jeweller and speciality retailer.

As I grow older, my love for this brand just keeps on increasing. To me, they tick all of the boxes.

Of course, being a student, I can't afford to spend thousands of pounds on their most extravagant pieces, but I am a huge sucker for there 'Sterling Silver' collections.

Over the past couple of years I have acquired 7 items from said collections, most of which I have purchased myself before anyone starts to think I'm ridiculously spoiled (saving up for something is so much easier when you have your heart set on it).

In June of this year, I was lucky enough to visit New York City - as you can see I went a little overboard in their 5th Avenue Flagship Store on the first day of my trip!

Last week, our Tuesday lecture focused on Brand Equation and all of the different ways that brands say who they are. Tiffany's was used as an example in this lecture and because I love it so much I thought I would share the information with my readers!

Without even realising it as a consumer, there are a mix of design elements that formulate the brand:

Logo/Crest:

Colour/Tone:

Cool, Crisp, Classic & Luxury all rolled into one gorgeous colour.

Key Product:

Romance, Desire, Taste, Exclusivity, Status.

Gesture/Message:

Glamour, Heritage, Sophistication. 

Geographical Location:

Has to be the city that never sleeps. 

Cultural Reference/Icon:

This is one of my favourite images in the entire world created by artist
Michael Moebius - it's been my iPhone wallpaper background for as long as
I can remember.

This breakdown really puts into perspective just how good Tiffany's is at communicating to consumers without even being outright with their brand name. When you see an image of a little blue box you think of Tiffany's. When you think of New York you think of Tiffany's. When you see images of Audrey Hepburn you think of Tiffany's. 

They are also a brand who has realised how loved and sought after their product packaging is.

 I'll admit it, I'm a huge hoarder - I just can't bring myself to throw those beautiful bags and boxes away.

(Tip: If you're like me and have a small collection, put them where they can be seen in your bedroom don't hide them away to gather dust!)

Attending a Tiffany's event? Expect Blue Box Cupcakes.

The only thing they seem to be missing is a Pattern/Motif as currently their only design is the mixture of the blue shade and the white ribbon. Although I'd love to see what they would come up with for this, part of me doesn't want them to as I feel it would take away from the traditional and classic element of the brand.

What do you think?

Love, Lana Skye x 

Photo Credit: Google Images

Role Model: Zendaya Coleman

Zendaya Coleman is without a doubt one of the best people to have emerged in the fickle world of celebrity for a long time, and something she did recently quite frankly sealed the deal. 

For a 19 year old girl, she is unbelievably gutsy and has no shame in sharing her frustrations when she disagrees with something. 

On Wednesday 21st October of this year the 19 year old made the bold move of naming and shaming Modeliste Magazine after they retouched an image of her before publishing it for the world to see. 

Read that Instagram caption...need I say more about why I feel she's a role model?

After looking at the images above, its pretty clear which one has been retouched (left) and which one hasn't (right). After seeing how incredible Zendaya looks in the unedited version, I really don't understand what Modeliste Magazine were thinking!? Her figure is beautiful and curvaceous, I just don't see why they would want to hide that. Second of all, why did they make her skin such an odd, orange tinged colour? Weird. 

For such a young woman I feel she is nothing short of incredible, looking down on the huge issue issue of media manipulation and instead pioneering self love.

Keep doing you Zendaya! Everybody loves it!

Love, Lana Skye x 

Trend Analysis

Strobing. The latest makeup technique that everybody is desperate to master. 

The image above along with a handful of others have been doing their rounds on social media for a while now and I have to say I have been desperately trying to up my highlighting game.

Last week, me and my course mates were split up into groups and given a category.

My category, as you can probably guess, is 'Beauty'.

For the first part of our task, we had to analyse different trends that were predicted and occurred in Autumn/Winter 2015, 'Strobing' obviously becoming our main focus. This involved collecting information from a range of secondary sources, whether it be WGSN forecasts, media coverage, magazines or the fashion press. 

After doing so in our own time, in one of our seminar's we all came together, laid out all of our information on the table in front of us and established connections as well as creating words we felt associate well with the trend 'strobing'. 

After some thought on a word to sum up the trend, I experienced a brainwave and thought of the Disney Classic 'Peter Pan' (probably because I had watched it the night before). From this, we came up with 'Neverland' as the whole concept of that place is that it's where you go if you never wish to grow up. Strobing is essentially all about making your complexion much more dewy, natural and youthful - which made it a perfect fit!

I hope you enjoyed this little insight into life as an FCP student (expect a lot more as this is part of an ongoing project)!

Love, Lana Skye x 

Photo Credit: Google Images. 

Essena O'Neill - "Social Media Is Not Real Life"

One evening last week I was scrolling down my Facebook feed (procrastinating as usual) when I came across an article written for Glamour Magazine surrounding this girl...

Essena O'Neill.

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, then you too will have been made aware of her in the past week or so.

Long story short, she was an 'Instagram Model' who's popularity began at the tender age of 15. Since then, her fan base and followers grew to over a half a million. From a consumer perspective, looking at her pictures her life was desirable and seemed nothing short of perfect. She has hit the headlines stating the exact opposite. She has called out saying she's quitting social media, she's deleted over 2000 of her Instagram photos and edited the captions of those remaining (example below).

After reading Glamour's article and some of Essena's newly edited captions, it really made me stop and think. I personally use social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter on a daily basis and it really made me realise how reliant I am on them. I don't know about anyone else, but if I take a good picture the likelihood is that it'll end up on my Instagram feed.

As expected, not everybody has felt sympathetic towards her. Some of her own friends have even  shot her down, claiming her to be 'fake' and using this stunt as 'shameless self promotion'. I don't know the girl so I can't fully judge her, but in my opinion I think she has perhaps gone a little overboard. Even if the life she showed on her social media platforms was too good to be true, a lot of people would quite frankly kill to have been in her position.

One think I have learned however, is that not everything on social media should be believed. People (myself included) only post things they want the world to see. I think everybody has been guilty of that at some stage to some degree.

What do you think?

Love, Lana Skye x 

Photo credit: Google Images.

Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2015

This fashion show has been a highlight for me every year for as long as I can remember and on Tuesday the craziness and excitement began once again!

Before now, I feel like there has always been a certain exclusivity surrounding it, in the sense that unless you work closely with VS it's near enough impossible to get all of the in depth gossip on the events that are going to unfold.

Now however, I seemed to get the impression that VS perhaps wanted to make the event much more accessible. This was mainly through their decision to air the show on Snapchat Live.

Gigi Hadid & Kendall Jenner were announced as the new 'angels' who would be walking the runway this year.

This caused quite a lot of controversy as it suggests that VS's Senior Creative Edward Razek is looking for models who are dominant public figures i.e. celebrities, instead of those who have worked their way up in the industry. Jourdan Dunn, a model who has walked for VS Fashion Show's previously, was unexpectedly dropped this year. 

She's super feisty! 

Ultimately, Kendall Jenner in particular is part of the Kardashian/Jenner brand, so it was definitely a tactical move from a promotional perspective as she has created a huge wave of publicity.

One thing I love about the show's in particular is that they make a day out of it. The buzz starts from early in the morning and doesn't die out until the early hours of the following day after the models and guests have attended the after party (major life goals to attend both the show and after party at some point).

The illustrations that have been created of the outfits from the show are simply to die for!

If you haven't already, check out Hayden Williams' Instagram Page, he is the king of fashion illustration!

Do you think hiring Gigi and Kendall as Angels was a good or bad move?

Love, Lana Skye x 

Photo Credit: Google Images, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube. 

Glamour Women of the Year Awards USA 2015

I don't usually post twice in one day, but I couldn't not when such an exciting event took place on Monday evening. If you didn't catch the featured live story on Snapchat then it might still be there to view, but if not then quite frankly you missed out!

GLAMOUR Magazine in my opinion is the complete messiah at hosting events. I just adore the whole concept of a bunch of successful women getting together to celebrate one another!

I think the absolute highlight for me was when Brooklyn Beckham presented his mam with the 'Fashion Force' award! (http://www.itv.com/news/2015-11-10/yes-she-smiled-victoria-beckham-accepts-fashion-award-presented-by-eldest-son-brooklyn/)

Another huge moment of course was when Caitlyn Jenner was presented with the Transgender Champion Award. Say and think what you like, I can't help but admire the lady. Against all odds she's powered through and become an incredible figure for individuals in the same situation to look up too. 

Her relationship with her daughter Kylie is also something I admire. They're a family who have lived under a microscope throughout their whole lives so far which would have made the situation a million times harder. For an 18 year old girl Kylie seems incredibly mature - I think she's fab!

Love, Lana Skye x 

Photo Credit: Google Images.

"Fashion is a real degree and it's bloody hard!"

Hi guys, yesterday I finished off writing an article for The Tab which was of course focused on my course here at university. (For anybody who doesn't know what The Tab is, it's basically an online news site for students based in the UK). 

It got published at around 4pm and I can honestly say I'm over the moon with how well received it has been! I'm the most read author for The Tab Trent, at the moment my article has had almost 20,000 views and I'm currently ranked as the 12th most read author across the UK (yay me!) Of course, there were some negative comments made but that was completely expected. In the fashion world you have to be hard skinned so getting used to it now will definitely benefit me in the long run ha! 

If you fancy taking a look, here is the link for the article: http://thetab.com/uk/trent/2015/11/10/fashion-real-degree-bloody-hard-one-7721?utm_source=local&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=pages

Love, Lana Skye x

Photo Credit: Google Images.

Colour Project

Over the past few weeks, the key focus in our lectures & seminar's has been colour.

Learning about and creating colour palettes was the starting point of the project. 

I think the key knowledge I gained is that the strength of certain colours has an impact on if a colour advances or recedes. This basically means that warm colours such as red advance making them greedy and cool colours such as pale blue recede making them shy. As you can see from the image above, I played around on Photoshop using Blake Lively's gorgeous tribal cape, thinking about the selection, relationship and proportion between each colour.

After this task, we were placed into groups of 3 or 4 and asked to pick a colour from a category. We chose the complex colour 'Military Green'. I went away and created a Pinterest board in my own time (https://www.pinterest.com/lanaskyecaven/complex-colour-story-green-of-a-military-nature/)

In the IT Seminar that followed, we were given an image and asked to play around with pixels and colouring, using the colour we had chosen.

I loved this task as it improved my Photoshop skills (i'm currently pretty useless on it but hopefully that will change) and it formed the basis for the main part of the colour project we were set next.

I think every single person in my year of FCP will say they felt intimidated by the 'Make It' challenge. In simple terms, we had to think of a story/narrative surrounding our colour, purchase/collect props that would visualise it, plan and complete a photo shoot, edit our images and lay them out nicely and then present our final image to the group (so not very simple at all!)

After a lot of hard work, this was my groups finished product:

We ultimately wanted to move away from the negative connotations associated with the colour such as war, adding a bit of lightheartedness to the subject instead! We did however stay in keeping with the military theme through the use of 'bomb' in the title and the boiled sweet as they were very popular during war time. 

Yes thats me and yes my lips were stained green for days after, but it was so worth it! 

I can't wait for the projects to come (one of which we were set right after presenting this one - no rest for the wicked!)

Love, Lana Skye x 

Steampunk Coffee - North Berwick

As promised, 'Steampunk Coffee' is the place (coffee shop to be more precise) that I wanted to blog about, I'm quite frankly obsessed!

As a family, we visit North Berwick quite a lot but didn't notice this little needle in the haystack until a year or so ago. The high street in the village is teaming with different coffee shops so we never really felt the need to venture out and look for other ones, but we're so glad we did.

I think the main reason why I love it so much is because it's so different compared to your typical coffee shop through it's decor. Yes, there seems to have been an increase in the 'stripped back' look within restaurants and cafe's, but this one definitely seems to have some sort of edge.

If you were just walking past Steampunk, you wouldn't even know it was there as the outside is pretty plain apart from one small piece of signage on the wall of the building.

The interior is filled with exposed lightbulbs and roof sheathing which would automatically make you think it was quite a horrible and cold environment to be in, but the quirkiness of the place makes up for it completely.

Not to mention THE FOOD. If I lived in North Berwick permanently I would be in there everyday without a doubt! (The warm cookies and granola trifle's are to die for).

 Part of me thinks it strange that i'm so attracted to this type of place as typically i'm a bit of a girly girl - all I can say is if you have the chance to go then please do, you won't be disappointed!

I hope you liked this short and sweet review.

Like them on Facebook: Steampunk Coffee
Follow them on Instagram: @SteampunkCoffee

Love, Lana Skye x

Family Time In North Berwick

Hi again! As much as I want this blog to be heavily based on my time studying Fashion Communication & Promotion at University, I think it's important that I include little snippets of my personal life too so that anybody who would like to can get to know me a little!

Last Tuesday I took it upon myself to travel 6 hours on a train up to North Berwick from Nottingham to surprise my family who were on holiday there at the time (their reactions were priceless and made the long journey so worth it!)

North Berwick is one of those golden places that I class as a home away from home. I know that little village like the back of my hand and whenever we go as a family were always so relaxed.

I thought it would be nice if I included a few pictures from my time away down below. If you follow me on Instagram then this will be a bit repetitive, sorry in advance! My username is @lanaskyecaven for anyone who is interested!

Fletchers Cottage Spa in Archerfield - definitely recommend this place
you feel relaxed from the minute you walk in the door!

We've definitely become regulars in this cafe, every morning we would go
for a sausage and egg sandwich.

Me and my Mam walking along the beach in matching Zara coats (awkward).

Halloween in the Caven household isn't complete without some themed
cupcakes!

Blog post to follow on one particular place we visited on this trip - should be up on Friday!

Love, Lana Skye x