Fashion Context
Written and Designed by Eden Harvey
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I went into this project completely blind. Being the first project of my 3-year university life I was more than nervous, but I jumped in with the hope that it would be the beginning of something better. The first few weeks consisted of lots of briefing, during which I felt confident and excited to get stuck into the upcoming work. One thing I wasn’t expecting was the amount of research and writing we would be doing, which concerned me a bit as I don’t enjoy the writing aspect as much as the practical side, but I reassured myself knowing the experience with researching would build my confidence with writing over time and it would soon come more easy to me, and most likely more enjoyable.
If in future projects we have big portions of writing, I would give myself as much time as possible to complete it so I don’t have to sit and write for so long at one time, which would help me produce better writing and reduce my chance of losing focus. In retrospect I am satisfied with the writing I produced in this project, but I definitely should have allowed myself more time to split the sessions up.
The section of the project I enjoyed the most was the Dazed photography challenge, as it was a nice opportunity to work in a group and I was able to choose a role that focused more on my personal interests. I had the chance to style the models which is where my main interest is going into the future and was really excited to see the final photos showing models in outfits I put together. The whole project went as expected, everyone did their part and I got to enjoy a role I've always wanted to do in a more professional style. I valued the team aspect, being able to discuss ideas and throw suggestions back and forth, everyone having different plans and ideas which we could mold into a final plan was a fun experience.It was hard on a time crunch as we made some mistakes such as not explaining our plans to our male model, who wasn’t in our group, so we had to waste valuable time in explaining as we shot the photos, but I’ll take this onboard and avoid this mistake next time.
Throughout the project we explored a lot of different techniques for producing items of work and how to use them to develop the quality of our work. Something new I learned was how to do image analysis in a more professional way instead of just talking about shapes and colours, but instead about location, composition, the visual elements, how the image could be seen in different ways, meanings behind the appearance/ expression of a model and who was behind any photography, styling, modelling, drawings etc. I struggled at first to understand how exactly to write about these things in detail but quickly got the hang of it and began to enjoy writing the factual elements and my own personal viewings on images.
I enjoyed this first project, aside from the self-produced stress, and am excited to move onto future projects and see my improvement and growth.