Unexposed Expression

I have just finished my final project at university, which is a sad moment really, I love being a student: being able to experiment and be insane in my work is something I love, and I believe, although when I do leave I will still be in a creative field, being a student I feel you are at your most creative.

Anyway....


Our final project was left open to each of us to decide what brief we wanted to work towards. This in itself is maybe something that again being a student you can really creatively drive the brief to how you want to answer it, maybe in comparison for when you work in the industry. So, for my final brief at university, I decided to focus on trend for A/W12. At university we are truly privileged to have W.G.S.N at our fingertips for free until we graduate, which is a massive, beneficial and sheerly amazing resource and site. For my trend brief I was attached to the trend site to figure out and understand trend in itself (as this was the first time I really studied trend) but to also distinguish trend for A/W12.

After 2 months of field trips (which included visits to leeds and london), a tonne of research and articulation, I began to understand and creatively experiment with trend ideas for A/W12.

My trend is called Unexposed Expression, it's a theme that lies with the new minimalist consumer, buyer and person. It's a protest against the digital and an exploration of simple, basic being.

For my actual project I looked at producing a trend package, these images here, are visuals from each virtual section- these are the visuals I created to showcase my idea and concept.

Concept:





Colour:





Structure & Form:









Materials:




Shape:







(all images & text copyright of Ashleigh Chapman)

Diary talk.

Wow, third year is incredibly busy, sorry all my lovely readers for not posting in such a long time.

Last night was a night where myself and my team members at university have been planning, organising and stressing about for weeks. We had our fashion show that we literally organised everything for...the models, the clothing, the decorations, everything. Soon I will be posting up pictures from the stylish night to give you guys an insight into my life at the minute :)

Also, tomorrow Gok Wan, the stylist to the public, will be holding his Fashion Fix in Leeds, in the gorgeous Corn Exchange, so after tomorrow I will have some fab pictures from that too.

I'm nearly coming up to my christmas break from uni, so I will be posting much more over the next 3 weeks, but I do have some very exciting brief's to do over christmas-I will keep you guys up to date with those.

'Folding Fashion' photoshoot

These are my images for our last university brief, 'Folding Fashion'.

The brief was to concentrate on still life styling for a brand of our choice and to do the photoshoot, we needed to consider how we will show the clothing rather than the accessories in a still life fashion image, without a model.

My chosen brand is American Apparel, I chose this brand because I knew specifically that it would be a challenge to do a still life fashion story as their advertisments are and always have shown a sexy girl in the shot to promote the American Apparel 'product': I say 'product' because I don't really believe that the company is promoting it's products, I think American Apparel is promoting its lifestyle.

These are my images.




I wanted to use the bed sheet as a backdrop to my products to further highlight the sexual connotations AA has in their advertising, and I also wanted to take the product away to leave a silhouette of the product to evoke a story in the images. I leave the story up to the customer to work out.

New Uni, New ideas, New Briefs, New Me!

Well, I have finished my first semester at UCLAN uni and I've loved every minute of it, even the long commute on a morning, accompanied as always with Chris Moyles and his Radio1 team. It's been a brilliant start to a new life for me.

My briefs have been varied, i've worked alone, in a team, with collage, with a professional photographer on every project, with different models, different materials, it has been a real eye opener, lots of hard work and fun styling ideas. As the course is a lot more focused on the styling side of fashion i have been keeping up to date with the trends up and coming and at present which i have loved doing, i did do this before at UCA but im tending to do it that bit more here, i feel as though i have more free time to be productive here and as im living with the lady my head is really clear and my grades show it, and i dont mind saying it myself (cheeky grin!).

My favourite brief this year has got to be my very first brief. The credit crunch, customisation shoot. It was the first time i have worked with a professional model wearing my clothes and my ideas. The final look im pleased with and in the post production process my shoot only got better, and that little more complex. Im very proud of my sketchbook for this brief, its probably the best i've done in all of 2009.

1st Brief: Credit Crunch Shoot.

2nd Brief: Y.S.L Perfume campaign, group work.

3rd Project: Style Icon, Interview Magazine, Trend Page.

Uni Busy ness!

Well i have been a busy bee this year at uni!!

I've come up, (with a team of 4 others) a marketing campaign 83% worth of a mark for the company TRAID and experienced what those poor souls do on Dragons Den when being grilled about their budgets and ideas, not nice! ive taken over Oxford street with giant mascara bent brushes; ive turned my friend into a chic homeless woman; ive researched every type of student you could imagine and produced a successfull photoshoot pitched at Nylon; ive enjoyed thoroughly researching Hussein Chalayan for a fashion written piece, which led me to visiting the brilliant exhibition at The Design Museum dedicated to Chalayan's work; ive tried to add my personality to a brands webpage; ive used a dictaphone for the first time and i just love how much easier and less embarassing it is to stand and chat rather than ask the interviewee to lean over whilst i just borrow her back as a leaning surface whilst scribbling all thats said down on post it notes! and one thing that i found so valuable and have been meaning to do it for years is form a visual library, full of inspirations! All organised so perfectly!

Overall the year has been a huge learning curve, i can see more of what the industry is going to be like and how hard you gotta work to be heard and not just trampled on!

Now if you have read any of my previous posts, if you read the London Baby?? post you can probably understand my thoughts and feelings of living so far away from home and for some reason this year at uni was the hardest, maybe because it was my first year on the actual course im wanting to do and i could see how hard i had to work, maybe its the fact that im surrounded by a lot of brilliant, creative talent, maybe its because the people including the lecturers see everyone as a number or maybe its because the house that i lived in...well lets just say i may have been kidnapped: because of these reasons, ive decided to transfer to UCLAN and study Fashion Promotion with Styling.

I had my interview a couple of weeks back, it went really well, the lovely woman who interviewed me was very nice and she got me really excited about joining the uni and the course, so from september, i will be studying up north! Yayyy! Im joining the 2nd years so i need to get a group to let me in!! hahahah! She said i was more than ready to start 2nd year which was a nice confidence boost and after doing my Personal Pathway Project at the end of the year at UCA, doing the marketing pathway, im glad i chose to do styling rather than marketing at UCLAN, i found the last project at UCA really difficult although my mark was good.

So yes, a lot has changed this year, a lot of questions have been asked and answered, lots of pro's and con's lists were written and i do think i have taken a huge step in my future career. I hope i have done the right thing: at the minute it feels good but, i just hope in 20 years time it shows me that my decision was correct.

UCLAN here i come, goodbye Epsom!