S t u d y i n g
M a r k e t i n g
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O p e r a t i o n s
Personal Portfolio Assignment
C o n t e n t s Patchwork text 1 - On designer Heikki Salonen and design process Patchwork text 2 - Product Placements in Films - Breakfast at Tiffany’s Patchwork text 3 - Web 2.0 - Comparison of 2 webpages Wetpaint.com - wiki site development - extract
veronika molnar: 08009873
heikki salonen
the designer: heikki salonen 01/2001-12/2004: Fashion Stylist Assistant for Henna koskinen, Mia Dillemuth, Teri Niitti, Helsinki, Finland
02-06/2005: Internship at Preen, London, United Kingdom 03/2007: Winner, Bower-Roebuck Fashion Tailoring Competition, London, United Kingdom 2006-2008: MA in Fashion Design, Fashion & Textiles Department, Royal College of Art, London, United Kingdom
Concept
The designer looks at Ingmar Bergman’s world for
inspiration. He acquire the desired look, allure in his clothes by using dark colours, simple shapes but
but expressive details. Looking at his designs, clothes and photoshoots is like looking at this picture
taken from an Ingmar Bergman movie entitled the “The Seventh Seal”.
The V&A has collaborated with the Royal College of Art on the exhibition featuring RCA fashion graduates’ works, Future Fashion Now. The display aims to show how a collection is put together, so not only the final designs are showcased but also some of the sketchbooks and other materials that present the evolution of the designs, how it all starts, and what ideas go through in this evolution and how they are developed into clothes and other fashion accessories. This is presented through 4 stages: Concept, Form, Technique and Detail. RCA Graduate, the Finnish, Heikki Salonen was one of the young talents featured in this exhibition. His style and overall concept is to create certain allure, a tomboyish yet feminine allure. He says he is inspired “the brooding moodiness of Ingmar Bergman films.” (Elleuk.com, 2009). Looking at his designs on the runway and on photos both give this impression. His style involves simplicity in shapes and figures, which does not mean un-feminine, but richness in detail and in textures or materials. Concept is there to stay and it also determines the basics of the forms, techniques and details of a collection. A concept in itself is self-explanatory and it is the base for all further research on how to achieve this certain feeling of the concept? This leads to questions like “is this shape the best to use for what I want to create?” and “which techniques that I am familiar with should dominate in this collection to best describe the feeling, the mood I want to induce?” and “what kind of details should I focus on? Should I use material, prints and/or colours?”
Heikki Salonen’s clothes are feminine garments in simple shapes with tomboyish allure. He uses as many dresses and skirts in his collections as trousers but the skirts in simple shapes paired with those masculine blouses and coats give a masculine allure and the skinny or rather tight fitting than loose trousers imply femininity. Tops and coats are all very masculine and shapeless but without destroying the femininity of the wearer. Heikki uses various techniques in creating his clothes except knitting. His clothes are from very different materials. Heikki is very much focused on the use of rich detailing. We can see that he mainly played with prints in his graduate collection. He used different ones from Cure’s album cover photo to tartans but with always some modifications, a twist so that we don’t think immediately about its origins or that we might have seen this or that before. The album cover print on the blouse he made was so much magnified no one would ever think it was a borrowed image and the tartans were in such an unusual colour, a colour we don’t see often in tartan. This exhibition explores well the different stages of the design process and draws the attention on how important it is to research, to think, rethink and link ideas to create a product. Analysing a young designer’s work this close enabled me to realise how important it is to have a basic idea to be able to go further and showed me how important it is focus on each little part at one time to get the best results in any project whether it is designing or writing or even shopping.
Bibliography and references Elleuk.com, 2009, at http://www.elleuk.com/catwalk/collections/fashion-east-heikki-salonen/spring-summer-2010 http://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/show.aspx/catwalk-report/ id,8503 For Heikki’s biography and sketches: http://www.itsweb.org/ jsp/en/itstalentsdata/talentID_226_conctype_0.jsp For runway images at www.catwalking.com and others at www.google.com
Product Placement in films
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
P r o d u c t p l a c e m e n t a t A u d r e y H e p b u r n ’ s B r e a k f a s t a t T i f f a n y’ s Breakfast at Tiffany’s is one of the best comedies/romantic movies of all times featuring actress Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard as her in film partner. This film is known about many things including beautiful dresses by Hubert de Givenchy, Audrey’s great performance, entertaining love story, great music and probably the biggest product placement of all time because it is even in the title. Tiffany & Co. is a famous American jewellery and silverware store. It is very elegant and Holly Golightly describes it in the film as a store that has the perfect ambience for shopping and for relaxing. Holly Golightly is a poor, small town girl who escaped her past at the age of 14 and came to New York. She had always dreamed of becoming a rich and elegant woman. She does not have the money to shop at Tiffany and Co. but she dreams about being able to shop there, she dreams of marrying a rich man who would at the end cover her expenses and secure the life she always dreamed of living. The movie is also good because it shows this basic difference of lifestyle between rich and poor between socialites and housewives. This can be seen through Holly Golightly’s (Audrey Hepburn) apartment. It is completely empty; she only has the essentials like a bed, one shelf, and one sofa. Everything else is in suitcases. She only has champagne glasses, which are essential for her cocktail nights. She does not have food in her apartment but she has many clothes, make up, and perfume hidden at unexpected areas.
The use of Tiffany’s, the jewellery store is a very good choice from the novelist upon whose story the movie is based on. That is why an existing brand in film is a good idea. It reinforces the understanding of the background, the lifestyles, atmosphere and the setting of the film. It makes it so much easier for the viewer to get the idea behind the movie and the characters with the use of such big brands. By associating a character with a famous brand of whatever sort the viewer understands, imagines the character easier and he/she becomes more realistic. The use of this specific brand in this movie is a good choice because it represents a lifestyle that the heroine of the film would like to have and pretends to have. This movie shows why product placement is a good idea in a movie especially in fashion or lifestyle related movies. Brands are identified with lifestyles and social status in real life as they will be in films.
H o l l y
G o l i g h t l y life of a New York Socialite
naive
elegantly phony
Dreams of a home just like Tiffany’s
Tiffany’s stands for everything good and nice in life
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- Blasting Away at Product Placement By Tom Lowry and Burt Helm (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_43/b4152060060411.htm) - Embrace brands on TV by Rupert Howell (http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/embrace-brands-on-tv/3004736.article) - U-turn on product placement fails to ignite TV industry By Joe Fernandez (http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/u-turn-on-product-placement-fails-to-ignite-tv-industry/3004509.article) - New-School Fashion Vies To Outfit Artists By Michael Poalotta; Rashaun Hall (http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/ miscellaneous-retail-retail-stores-not/4662696-1.html) - Ads Take a Wide Angle By Jeff Bercovici (http://0-web. ebscohost.com.emu.londonmet.ac.uk/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=1 03&sid=f1dbd8de-6446-4a5f-8804-2a52d8c8c44f%40session mgr112&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=buh &AN=17219651) - Summer Movies, Fashion and Profits By Marcy Medina (http://0-web.ebscohost.com.emu.londonmet.ac.uk/ehost/detai l?vid=5&hid=103&sid=f1dbd8de-6446-4a5f-8804-2a52d8c8c4 4f%40sessionmgr112&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d %3d#db=buh&AN=20813252)
C o m p a r i s o n
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The name web 2.0 stands for website that are open to the public, meaning anyone who joins can edit her section of the website, create a profile and add information or any type of file the user wants to share depending on the aim of the web 2.0 network/site the user have chosen. Examples of these kinds of websites are: youtube.com, twitter.com, facebook.com, gmail.com/blogger and the list goes on and on. As more and more people become familiar with the internet and its possibilities more and more these sites become popular and more and more web 2.0 sites appear. The fashion industry has been the sector that uses most of these web pages and that developed lots of web 2.0 pages recently that only concern people interested in fashion. Examples for sites that only people interested in styling and fashion “can” or rather would use are: www.lookbook.nu and www.polyvore.com. Lookbook.nu is exactly like a blog but everyone who is a member can upload “street style” images. Meaning that there is no editor or photographer who chose the images. On lookbook.nu user are only allowed to register if they have received an invitation from a member or they can fill out an application form uploading pictures of themselves so that owners can judge if they are worthy to use this “platform of self publication” as member not only represent themselves but also the site.
Polyvore.com is more online-creative. After registering users are able to create sets of clothes from garments of the list that is presented and can also import clothes to this list and use them. This is called aggregation. Here users don’t use their own images to create fashionable looks, mashups of different images. After creating these so called sets users can download the image as .jpeg and use it as they wish or they can post them to the main site so that other members can see and rate them. Polyvore.com often presents competitions for their users where they have to create sets for a specific person or mood, but there are many companies posting their own competitions on polyvore.com as well. Creating outfits or sets in polyvore.com is like using Photoshop to crop, cut, resize and mix images. Both sites use folksonomy which is the option of tagging information on pictures, images. On polyvore.com the garments used in a set are automatically tagged with the brands name and the garments price and on lookbook.nu the user has the possibility to tag information about the clothes worn on the uploaded picture. These tags include brand, price and garment category. At the end on both web 2.0 pages the image created/uploaded is presented with a tag cloud next to it so whenever someone views it they know what is featured on the picture. Widgets are presented also on both sites. Web 2.0s present many opportunities for web users but they also have their disadvantages. Disadvantages include dependence and unchecked contents floating around online and internet surfers can easily bump into contents they may not want to view for multiple reasons or are false.
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http://www.rossdawsonblog.com/Web2_Framework.pdf
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veronika m HomeThis is a featured page 04/01/10 Hi all, This is my first entry. I know I have created my wiki site a while ago but I just haven’t been able to post anytihing. I was occupied with creating my own blog and my studies at LondonMet. I study fashion marketing and this semester I had 4 modules. All of them were really exciting and new for me. I love my course and I want to make the most of it. I am not yet really sure if I am doing the right thing for my marketing operations module by writing this text but I hope that looking at my notes and uni webpage will help me find out. As I haven’t been able to start a new post for some reason i am just going to continue on this one. This wiki site isn’t the easiest one. I consider myself as someone aware of technologie but this site made me change my opinion about that! The marketing operations module is about knowng our own leaning styles and following our own learning developpement through analysing ourselves. We had to complete a few questionnaires to determine our learning styles. The results of mine weren’t surprising. I am a “last minuter” which means i start everything at the last minute. I was always like this i know that. I don’t feel the pressure until I am close to hand in date or exam date. which is true only in 70%. When I recieve a task i start on it immideatly but just with brainstorming. I jot down a few ideas and then leave it at it. i come back to it when date is really close and then ususally i work on it for the last days I have left. Luckily I am not a last minuter in group works. When it suggests group work i am vey motivated and attend al sessions with my group and try to do everything as soon as possible. It is probably because group projects feel more like time consuming activity due to the fact that everything depends on others and things do go in my own rythm so I try to get them done as soon as possible. In group projects I always tried to do/take the creative parts such as visual things, work structures and selecting important information as I am I think good at those and bad at for example writing easy o read and understand texts and probably to lazy to do a proper research. Our first assessment was a group assessment. we had to chose a designer exhibited in Victoria and Albert Museum and present him. Our group chose Heikki Salonen. We were a great group of 3 in total uderstanding. The first meeting we talked about how to structure ou presentation what to include and what to show as images and decided on the parts each of us is going to research. The next time we showed each other our findings and corrected everything together and looked for images. The 3rd meeting we came with our scripts and slideshow which was the only thing left to be judged. and then e were ready to present. For this assessment we got a B. We will have to improve on our presentation skills to make it easier and more interesting to listen to us. Now I have to start on my second assessment which will represent 75% of my final mark. It will consist of 3 patchwork texts of 500 words each. I am planning to finnish the 1st one today for sure but hopefully the frst 2 as they are related. and tomorow the 3rd one. Then i will give it some time and recheck on it a day later and correct possible mistakes and then give it off to be proofread. I will come back with updates on how it is going!!
05/01/10 Today I did a bit of a research on this wetpaint thing as I wasn’t sure I know what it was. That was a great idea as I found out that it is something completely different to what I thought it was. :). I was watching videos here and also read the text which explains what wetpaint is. The thing is I thought it was like a blog. When you add posts and then it will be like a diary. And it is actually not like a blog but more like word document available online for everyone to edit it. The only thing I don’t understand is that this way you cannot be sure that the next person will contribute to it correctly. Okay, so my wetpaint site is like a learning journal following me on writing my patchwork texts. Which also gave me a hard time probably because I wasn’t sure i know what a patchwork text is. So I looked it up. I found a uni site and read the secondly linked article. So I was on Victoria and Albert Museum’s website to find an object I ill be writing about. I went to the fashion section and typed Vivienne Westwood. I immediately decided to chose the clutch bag with a painting on it. I did not know the artist or anything about it so I looked it up and saw that it is a painting by J.H. Fagonard whom I know because one of my al time faveourite paintings was made by him. It is called the Girl On The Swing, which is really beautiful. I saw that painting in the Wallace gallery a while ago and caught my attention immediately. Since then a come across it almost everywhere on the cover of Robert Merle books and so on.... To be able to write about the clutch bag I decided to look for information about Vivienne Westwood and her collections. Now I am at 240 words. I need to double this. What I have so far: “Patchwork text 1 Victoria and Albert, V&A for short is the world’s largest museum containing decorative arts collections from all around the world. The V&A was founded in 1852 and was first called The Museum of Manufactures that included art and science collections. Later by the time science related galleries have been separated and moved to the now called Museum of Science. The museum has also changed its location over the time moving from Marlborough House to Somerset house and then finally to its actual location in South Kensington. V&A contains galleries such as Architecture, Asia, Ceramics, Contemporary, Furniture, Glass, History Periods & Styles, Metalwork, Paintings & Drawings, Photography, Prints & Books, Sculpture, Theatre & Performance, Textiles and Fashion, Jewellery & Accessories. My choice of object that can be found in the fashion gallery of V&A is a clutch bag from Vivienne Westwood from 1991. This bag is from silk with a detail from J.H. Fragonard’s Swarm of Cherubs painting printed on it and with gold plasticized lining. Vivienne Westwood has also used this print on a raincoat which makes it “an eye-catching and spirit-lifting ensemble for wet weather” (*1). Vivienne Westwood’s use of prints of this genre is quite usual. She started using historical elements of many kinds in the 1990’s. She had a whole collection based on rococo paintings that she named Portrait. It featured the biggest names of the French rococo period such as Boucher and Gainsborough. “ This is not a lot... I have to give it some time to see or to be able to evaluate what is missing.
07/01/10 So lucky i asked someone about this coursework. Because i was going completely wrong. So i went on londonmet.ac.uk to check the quidelines, weird i have been there a million times but I always got lost in that house with all those rooms. Did not know i had to look somewhere else. I guess I have missed something in class but my notes from the last class before christmas suggested something very different. Anyways I am nw starting over. 08/01/10 The V&A has collaborated with the Royal College of Art on the exhibition featuring RCA fashion graduates’ works, Future Fashion Now. The display aims to show how a collection is put together, so not only the final designs are showcased but also some of the sketchbooks and other materials that present the evolution of the designs, how it all starts, and what ideas go through in this evolution and how they are developed into clothes and other fashion accessories. This is presented through 4 stages: Concept, Form, Technique and Detail. RCA Graduate, the Finnish, Heikki Salonen was one of the young talents featured in this exhibition. His style and overall concept is to create certain allure, a tomboyish yet feminine allure. He says he is inspired “the brooding moodiness of Ingmar Bergman films.” (Elleuk.com, 2009). Looking at his designs on the runway and on photos both give this impression. His style involves simplicity in shapes and figures, which does not mean un-feminine, but richness in detail and in textures or materials. Concept is there to stay and it also determines the basics of the forms, techniques and details of a collection. A concept in itself is self-explanatory and it is the base for all further research on how to achieve this certain feeling of the concept? This leads to questions like “is this shape the best to use for what I want to create?” and “which techniques that I am familiar with should dominate in this collection to best describe the feeling, the mood I want to induce?” and “what kind of details should I focus on? Should I use material, prints and/or colours?” Heikki Salonen’s clothes are feminine garments in simple shapes with tomboyish allure. He uses as many dresses and skirts in his collections as trousers but the skirts in simple shapes paired with those masculine blouses and coats give a masculine allure and the skinny or rather tight fitting than loose trousers imply femininity. Tops and coats are all very masculine and shapeless but without destroying the femininity of the wearer. Heikki uses various techniques in creating his clothes except knitting. His clothes are from very different materials. Heikki is very much focused on the use of rich detailing. We can see that he mainly played with prints in his graduate collection. He used different ones from Cure’s album cover photo to tartans but with always some modifications, a twist so that we don’t think immediately about its origins or that we might have seen this or that before. The album cover print on the blouse he made was so much magnified no one would ever think it was a borrowed image and the tartans were in such an unusual colour, a colour we don’t see often in tartan. This exhibition explores well the different stages of the design process and draws the attention on how important it is to research, to think, rethink and link ideas to create a product. Analysing a young designer’s work this close enabled me to realise how important it is to have a basic idea to be able to go further and showed me how important it is focus on each little part at one time to get the best results in any project whether it is designing or writing or even shopping.
12/01/10 finished. now i design the layout in CS photoshop and indesign and then it is done. it has been long.
link: http://veronikam.wetpaint.com/