Rachel Hovell

Graduate Portfolio

Fashion Styling and Image Making (BA HONS)

The University of Salford

2011

Rachel Hovell Fashion Stylist and Image Maker

Graduate Portfolio

In this book I am going to look at several projects I have completed throughout my final year at Salford University.

I will look at my influences, my research, and processes of all my work, to the final outcome and personal evaluations of all of these projects too.

Contents

Harvey Nichols..................Page 4Justin Oh...........................Page 22Crane TV...........................Page 30Mother Nature...................Page 36Hynagogia..........................Page 47Vintage Fashion Fairs......Page 52

Harvey NicholsBrief Harvey Nichols Manchester has commissioned a series of photographs to be displayed in their resturant within their hugely popular Manchester store. Working with a single key piece from their winter stock we were asked to produced a series of images that works for the Harvey Nichols store itself, to appeal to their customers and make the indiviual piece more desirable.

Organising everything from the model to the location, I wanted to create a really commercial image that would make the key pieces look absolutely beautfiul. I organised for a MUA to help out for the day, and set up my own lighting equipment in Salford University Student Union area, using the beautifully coloured windows as the main focus of the location.

We kept the make-up and hair styling very simple in order to not distract the viewer away from the clothing itself.

Our first key piece was Balmain’s £3500 Black and Gold embroidered blazer, a perfect piece for my team to focus on.

From here we created some amazing images that were really stong and showed off the blazer perfectly.

MUA-Tori JamiesonModel-Cara TreweekDesigner-Emma Cunliffe

Our Next key piece was Alexander Wang’s beautiful suit dress, which we decided needed a different location. In the same room, we found a perfect pillar to use.

Our next key piece was Dianne Von Frustenburg’s beautiful floral print dress. To really contrast the patterned dress, we choose a blue shutter background, to give the image an extra edge.

We added this huge diamontee flower ring, to really accentuate the summery feel to this outfit.

Justin OhBrief Using given fabrics, design and create an outfit using your own ingenuity within one day. The only stipulation is to incorporate petersham ribbons into your outfit as a decortative element, ie. bows, a belt, lattice effects etc. How you use it is entirely up to you.

Working with two designers, Angela ......... and Annie ......... we decided to use our petersham ribbon as an accessory instead of part of the actual outfit itself. We used our pink fabric to create a quilted gillet, using corset boning

to help the bottom seam stand out from the body.

Using brown gingham fabric, we also made a dress with quilting, in order to create a whole outfit that worked really well together. Whilst in prouction, I experimented on how to style the outfit with extra fabric left over.

In the end we decided to use the ribbon as a head accessory, sewing our ribbons together to create a platted look, and wrapping it around our model’s head and pony tail, draping it down the neckline. Shooting in the studio, we used a plain grey backdrop to contrast the bright colours of our outfit, and used a simple tungsten light, focused drectly on our model.

We experimented in using the gillet in different ways, (seen to the left) to create a really edgy look. Using different body shapes, our model really showed off the unusual style of the garments, and how the boning was used in both garments to make different shapes.

At the end of the day, our guest designer Justin Oh announced the winner of today’s project. I was so happy to find that out that team had won. Justin said that our team had worked brilliantly together, designers and stylist, helping each other throughtout the day and using each other’s skills to create a perfect outfit. Whilst other teams had incorporated the ribbon into the actual garments themselves, using the ribbons as accessories instead meant that all three of us had a part to play in the final outfit. I was very proud to recieve our winners presents, Justin Oh bags.

Fashion to Business Fashion is a business. Many times, the focus for students is solely on the aspect of creating collections, but the aspect of building a brand or working within the corporate fashion enivonment is equally important to being a designer. Whether a designer is at the helm of an epoymous label or on the design team of a large fashion house, a designer is subject to market factors in all the creative decisions they make. From sourcing to marketing to branding to the complexity of being an employer, so many factors affect the creative environment. This module is meant to challange the designers to think as business people and create a collection that speaks to a specific target audience. The designers will be expected to work with a stylist and the team will cooperate to create their own collection which will include naming the brand, defining the price point, creating the competitive analysis, defining the retail outlets designing the logo and creating a compelling, fully-styled ad campaign. At the end, each team will be judged on how well they were able to create a collection that will result in sales to their target audience. At first I was a bit worried about this project, because I am definitely not a designer, but I know I am good at marketing from the results I recieved from my own photography web pages. So when I found out I was paired with designer Emma Cunliffe again I was quite relieved, knowing that our skills put together should make a brilliant design house with great results for this project.

The first thing we did was sit down and discuss who are target audience should be. We both decided that the best demographic to advertise to would be the fashion concious women of the UK, aged between 18 and 45. The women who have that spare bit of disposable cash to spend on luxurious fashion pieces that stand out from the crowd. We wanted to create an edgy yet glamorous brand that sells beauitful shoes and accessories to match our customers wardrobe year in and year out. We decided to split our brand into two halves, the classic collection that will suit any season, and the “ELE” collection (extra limited edition), that captures the biggest trends of each season. To show everything our brand provides, we decided to create a handbag and a pair of shoes to use in our advert for this project.

To emphasise the ubran and edgy style of our brand, Orignal Sole, we wanted to create a rather unusual image that would fit perfectly into any modern day fashion magazine. Picturing both our shoes and our pleather and chain bag, I think this image worked perfectly. Using a neon pink plinth for display and diagonal framing gave the image an extra stylish look.

Character Film - The Plight of Mother Nature

We were asked to create a character to base a photo shoot and short fashion film on. I decided to base my character on Mother Nature.

Mother Nature is the most beautiful thing in existence.Taking inspiration from every beautiful animal, plant and natural thing on the planet, her existence is flawless. With beautifully mesmerising blue eyes, perfect skin and mind-blowing clothing, made from feathers, fur, insect wings, flowers and scales. She is elegant, graceful and shy.She looks after everything that lives on the planet, from the birds in the trees to the fish in the seas, and everything in between, dedicating her entire life to this. Although she created everything you see in the natural world, she owns nothing, as every living creature is its own. She loves to see her work in action, watching the sun rise, rain on a sunny day, the sunset into a beautiful twilight mist and the moon rising, to new born animals and plants growing naturally. You can find her all over the planet, from the deepest parts of the darkest oceans, to the highest peaks of the snow capped mountains. Her lifelong ambition is to create a world in a perfect balance of mankind and the natural earth. Since her creation of mankind, Mother Nature has been diminishing, falling from grace and becoming ill. Her beautiful planet has been covered in power plants, rubbish dumps and pollution. Her beautiful appearance has taken on the same look, covered in oil, rubbish and dead flowers.

She has become very angry and depressed at mankind for destroying her world. She cries for her poor endangered or extinct children daily. She believes that she needs to reveal herself to mankind, to make them realise what is happening to her, but is worried that if she does they may take advantage of her and not believe in her truly. Although her appearance diminishes, gaining wrinkled skin, tired looking eyes and oily clothing, she is still beautiful and this will never change. I choose Mother Nature as my character, because I believe she has an important message to send to the world. Her decaying and diminishing beauty and health is so worrying that I feel I need to show it to the world. Her life is really important at the moment, and I feel that it is an important message that needs to be told through fashion. There are debates happening all over the world, on whether mankind is responsible for “global warming” or not, and a lot of the world is trying to become more “energy efficient” and planet friendly.With my Mother Nature Photoshoot, I want to show the world, that even if mankind is not responsible for global warming, that we are responsible for the changes to the planet, and the diminishing of nature itself, from forest clearings to the pollution of the sea. I believe that if people were shown the actual effect of their wasteful lifestyles that more people may convert to being planet friendly. In my film I wanted to show the destruction and fall of Mother Nature, her Plight. So using the darkest outfits from my shoot I filmed her sadness and downfall.

You can see the full film on CD one at the back of this book.

To illustrate exactly what I wanted to portray within my character I used images from magazines and the internet to create character collages, showing her life and emotions.

From these collages I created dark outfits, using fur, feathers and lace.

To work with my Mother Nature character I choose an outdoor location with not a lot of clutter in the background, to make sure that my model (Collette Von Tora) was the centre of attention.

I placed my model on a flat area on top of a small hill, so that I could shoot from beneath, making the sky surround my model. the first scenes in my film featured my model “catwalk” walking fiercely, in order to show how Mother Nature is all over the planet at once, walking to distance to reach all of her children at once.

With my first two outfits, I filmed this same, dramatic “catwalk” walking, and edited my film so the outfit changed every so often within the same scene. I then filmed my

model gracefully yet sorrowfully dancing to the “rythm of life”, showing her depression and distress to the way mankind has been treating her.

To really emphasise the emotions that Mother Nature goes through, I then zoomed in on her face, capturing pain and sadness. I then asked my model to scream,

again stressing the pain that my character goes through in her day to day life, whilst her children die, and her home is destroyed.

I edited my footage so that the outfits were not constant, to try and show how Mother Nature changes her appearance in different places around the world.

To finish my film, I then asked my assistant to pour water mixed with black food colouring to represent oil, over my model. The distress and pain shown in my model’s face worked really well with this idea, symbolising the oil spill disasters that are happening all over the world.

Independant Project - Hypnagogia Fashion Film

For my final independent project, I am going to produce a short fashion film on Hypnagogia - the state of dreaming. I want to tell the story of a girl getting lost in her dream, confused and lost in her surroundings. As her dream continues, her clothes and her surroundings become darker, scaring her to the point of desperation. Using a mix of blurred focus and sharp images and soft lighting, I want to portray how a dream feels, unreal and strange.

As inspiration for this film, I am looking at blurred, doubled and smudged images, using light floaty fabrics to accentuate the graceful movements of my model.

Dolce and Gabbana’s Autumn/Winter 2011 collection will be a big inspiration in my styling for this film, capturing the graceful elements of the light transparent fabrics.

To start my film, I pictured my model waking up in her dream, confused yet happy to be in such beautiful surroundings. Her floaty white dress symbolises her dream like state, the elegance and gentleness of the Hypnagogia. Elora (my model), then explores her surroundings, touching things and taking in the view.

As Elora then wakes up in a completely new place, with new clothes she begins to get scared, worried about what is happening around her.

I then used my manual focus to blur my model, creating a stranger and more dream like appearance. As Elora gets more and more scared, she starts to run, trying to find her way out of her dream and wake up. She starts to become unhappy and freightened that she may never wake up. Again, in another new place, Elora is confused, but still happy to see such beauitful surroundings that seem almost familiar to her, as she watches the ducks on the river I panned out to a blurred image of reflected trees in the water.

Suddenly night falls, and Elora is now petrified. As Darkness falls around her she hears noises from all around, scaring her to the depths of her soul. As I spiral around her frozen body, capturing the details and shapes of her outfit, her heavy breathing symbolises this fear. In desperation Elora then drops to the floor, giving up on the idea of ever escaping this nightmare.

I chose Muse’s “Sing For Absolution” for this film, because of the desperate struggle for acceptance and forgiveness described in the song. I felt this really fitted with the emotions shown in my film, and the timing of the song worked well with my editing too. Once I had edited my film, I used iMovie’s video effects to add a “dream” filter to all of the clips, to craete the blurred glow around my model. I felt this film was perfect for my individual project, as it showed that I can use both light and dark elements within my work and use them together to create something beautiful.

The UK’s Big Fashion Events

I have worked closely with The UK’s Big Fashion Events throughout the past year on several projects. In July 2010 I styled and directed around 30 models for their Spring/Summer Fashion show at Circo Liverpool. This including working out exactly how the show would run, from the path that the models would walk, to the style of their strut. Using clothing from Flashback Boutique, Liverpool

we created a fantastic show with brilliant results.

In December 2010 The UK’s Big Fashion Events held a Vintage and Fashion fair at the Met Quarter shopping center in Liverpool

where we hosted models acting as “Live Mannequins” to show off our stalls best pieces. Directing and styling the models myself, we had great feedback from both our stall holders and our customers.

To make sure each outfit I was given from our indivual store holders looked the best that it possibly could, I made sure each outfit was worn by the correct model, looking as body shapes and hair and skin colour too. I enjoyed working with the UK’s Big Fashion Events, and directing a big group of models is quite rewarding at the end of the day.