Gucci Collaborative Industry Week One Reflection

At the beginning of the week we were briefed about this project and I was quite excited for the opportunity to work with designers and textile practitioners at my academic level to create a menswear and womenswear collection for S/S 18. I would be working in a group of 6 which consisted of a menswear designer, a womenswear designer, an accessory designer, a textiles practitioner, and two promotors, one of which being myself. We chose a designer [Gucci] to design, make and promote for this project and we were all keen to get started. To begin with I made a checklist of the things that I must get done to complete this project, as well as some more desired tasks that I would like to do if I have time. The list I compiled is as follows;

Tasks I NEED to complete;

'Press Pack':

 -  Press release 

 -  Photoshoot 

 -  Event invites

 -  Photoshoot set designs 

 -  Event set designs 

 -  Casting 

 -  Hair and makeup

Mood boards for Photo shoot [location, mood/lighting, casting, styling, hair and makeup, props]

Tasks I WANT to complete;

Teaser film 

Dressing celebrities

Zine [from photoshoot]

Throughout a large portion of this week we have been going back and forth in the group with ideas about our concept and what we want our collection to be. Our initial idea was 70's inspired paisley, but after some feedback and further discussion it became known to us that our ideas were far too Pucci rather than Gucci. We looked at what Gucci was working on and producing currently and thought about what we could create that would evolve out of it. After seeing the mushroom print and the animalistic themes with the tiger in a recent campaign, we started thinking about Alice through the looking glass. This matched our chosen quote quite well; 'Nobody ever discovered ugliness through photographs. But many, through photographs, have discovered beauty.' - Susan Sontag. However after gaining feedback from other groups we came to the realisation that this idea was over done and therefore an obvious direction for Gucci. Many more ideas came about and then we all decided on Tacky Tourists. The idea found inspiration from Martin Parr and would produce designs that referenced ' I ♥ London ' or ' I ♥ NY ' ideas that are commonly associated with tacky tourists.