INITIAL DRAWINGS
After looking at my survey results, I decided to focus on buying secondhand as my main point because it’s more achievable for younger people in terms of budgets. Sustainable fashion brands tend to be more expensive than what young people are used to spending on clothes and therefore it’s most likely just not realistic to push that narrative. Even as I myself am undertaking this project and trying to shop sustainably, I can’t afford those kinds of brands and have been buying secondhand instead.
I visited charity shops to get an idea of what could be making them unappealing and what kind of imagery I could use in my project. Straight away the outside of the shop was not inviting, with old signs and drab window displays. Any kind of marketing material in the windows such as ads for car boot sales or special offer days were poorly designed, with no apparent target audience in mind apart from those who already shop there. Inside the shop, there was an abundance of clothing rails, too many to be able to comfortably look through, with no stand out displays or logical order. The thing is, when I did take the time to look through them properly, there were clothes from popular brands such as Topshop, H&M, Pretty Little Thing, Boohoo etc for a fraction of the price.
The images I drew from these visits were exactly the feeling the shops gave me, boring, bland and generally not that exciting. The only thing which made them slightly nicer was the bright colours I used, which wasn’t a true representation of what I saw anyway. It was virtually impossible to get any feeling of the aesthetic of the fast fashion marketing when the subject of the images was so disconnected to it, which prompted me to change directions. Digitally drawing gave me a broader colour palette and the ability to trace from photos of models and insert them in the images, as they are a key part in the fast fashion aesthetic.
DIGITAL COLLAGES
Whilst the digital drawings helped me to find my way a little bit, I still felt like there was a key element missing. The aesthetic of PLT, Missguided, Boohoo etc is hard to describe as it’s so dependent on the vibe of the photoshoots and what style of clothes are being advertised. Models in trendy clothes and bright colours are the only consistent elements within this, typography is sometimes included, often employing pro-female messages and the backgrounds differ entirely from palm trees to lollipops to roses. I created collages combining all of these elements and added in my own patterns to make images which are representative of the aesthetic I want to convey throughout this project.
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