This is a print ad for Duncan Quinn suits which was considered to be the most sexist Advertisement in 2008.

The leading character has been made very clear in this picture: a well-dressed beast teasing or insulting a barely clothed woman. The way he uses his tie to fasten the lady while he is holding one end of the cloth like leading a pet. One netizen describes it as “Duncan Quinn depicted mobsters torturing female bodies”[3] besides, The correlation of the utilisation of black and white classic filter could mean it’s ‘common’ and ‘normal’ to do such a thing as sexism appears throughout the human history.

It’s obvious that the girl is lying on the car bonnet with ‘luring’ underwear. Suppose that it’s her own will to do so, but the hidden message of what that action means is loathsome. You wouldn’t deny how successful it communicates with the audience and the strong effect of this view. It may leave an incredible impression on some people and makes good selling for the clothing, alternatively, it left with a terrible impression on people and decreased the sales and profits, it is temporarily debatable.

Referring back to the title ‘sexist advertisement’, the way how the man handles with the girl is the most sensitive point of this poster. What sort of message do they want to propagate? Are they trying to prove whether the positive or the negative? Were they aware of the possible impacts on the following fashion, consumers as this brand has a relatively high position in the fashion world?

Before God we are all equally wise and equally foolish.

–Albert Einstein

Sexism corresponds. If the position of the two figures is swapped: a wealthy woman tie up a barely clothed man with her silk scarf as a way to vending the woman clothing, how would the opposite gender feel? This method of belittling one to raising another is worth of sneer. Ethical issues this image constructs with Philander, vulgarity and dishonour. Even if this vision is farfetched to be an action between a couple, the ‘fun’ action between a relationship, this way of exposing the intimacy to public extend with marketing illustrates a cheap fashion.

A number of potentially problematic ethical issues could throw by this image. Duncan Quinn as a high-end men’s wear fashion company chooses to present this sort of ‘style’ to attract the customer, which could lead other small companies to copy or even keep extending their moral baseline. To disgust a group of people in order to please another group of people is also not a wise act and it may also deliver away quite a few potential clients from their market. If the sexist advertisement is the only way to sell either men’s wear or woman’s wear, then, fashion will be ridiculously meanness and shameful. A severe Ethical issue should be taking in consideration against the creativity and the talent.

Reference:

[1] Duncan Quinn (2014) Bespoke Duncan Quinn New York. Available from: http://duncanquinn.com/about/ [Accessed 2 December 2017]

[2] Chris Graham(2010) Interview: Duncan Quinn. Available from: http://cherwell.org/2010/05/15/interview-duncan-quinn/ [Accessed 2 December 2017]

[3] Leonora Epstein (2010) Study shows violent Fashion Ads ”lure” Consumers, But is that all? Available from: http://www.thefrisky.com/2010-04-20/study-shows-violent-fashion-ads-lure-consumers-but-is-that-all/ [Accessed 2 December 2017]

Research and Communication Skills module helped me improving my analysing skills and critical thinking. As an art student, I am more confident and comfortable to express my idea with lines, colours and patterns. Therefore, I was panicking at the beginning and scared to type the tasks. Through the process, I gained more and more confidence in writing and thinking about each concept in depth.

The first task starts with a simple and easy content: Online resource. In the session, the lecturer explained distinctively about the difference between primary resource and secondary resource and what type of online source is reliable and what is not. For example, I used to do my research depending on Wikipedia, but from then on, I found myself hardly using it anymore and entirely collecting information myself, bit by bit from various places and compressing them into the essay. I’m gradually avoiding the chance of being lazy and just relying on Wikipedia, and it’s beneficially for future development on research skills.

Additionally, the visual research task extended the ability to select information and take the essence and explore. This exercise required a mood board containing the inspiration of the artist and chose one to investigate. It provides an opportunity to practice on my analysing skill; observing the picture conscientiously, considering the intention and discovering the hidden message.

Except for those practical based tasks, Academic Integrity and Ethics were the most essential and useful concept in this module. From the topic of Academic Integrity, I learnt how to use Harvard referencing to quote where each source comes from to meet the standard formatting of using other people’s work. On the other hand, Ethics gets me to think about the moral baseline of creating or presenting artworks. They’re both theory-based, and the tasks test on your critical thinking and expressing your own opinion. In contrast, one is about ensuring that you understand your copyright to protect yourself and others; the other one is about you understanding, and consciously thinking about what you are spreading and the impact that it may have on people.

“leave the best until last.” Reflective writing is the most challenging task overall. It’s the only topic that we have to analyse a chapter from a book and referencing with other books. It’s the most time-consuming task as well. It certainly pushed me to read other books and to use the WSA liberty as it’s difficult to find an online resource that’s relevant to the text. Although, I can’t deny I learnt more on this task than others: From reading it over and over again, prooving with other sources and criticising the context in-depth and structuring how to put different topics in order.

In conclusion, it was an utterly useful module while doing the studio works. It’s a good practice to absolutely digging out your personal opinion and construct them in a digital wording format. The fact that you have a small piece of writing to complete each week helps you to get used to working under a deadline and gain that sense of achievement each week whiles feeling stressful for other moduled, alternatively, leaving thing until the last minute to fall and learn how to manage the time and being organised.

Julian Roberts is one of the artists that I’ve looked at in the Fashion rotation. His ways of creating garments, the cutting and the simplicity have honestly grasped my attention. Because of this task, I dug in-depth of where his inspirations came from,  who and what influenced him and helped him to carry on experimenting towards the final masterpiece.

This is one of Julian Roberts’s early work from a catwalk show. Tunnel technique was used to create and design the garment, which is also known as the subtraction cutting. Two fabrics composed the garment: the white ink-wash style contrast with plain dotty orange fabric. But the flowing lines and drapes establish the elegancy successfully without being distracted by the collision of the exciting orange and the bright yellow. According to Roberts’ other works, he kept the simplicity of the bodies throughout most of his subtraction cutting works, then his concentration will be investigating the essence of the tailoring method.

From my research about Julian Roberts’ working process, his type of tailoring does not consist of the precise accuracy of the measurement, and he would often have the fabric two times longer than the body length or even more. Hence, the creativity that he can spread on one piece of cloth won’t be limited.

However, this particular garment has more elements on decorating, visual awareness than many of his other works where he was obsessed with exploring the potential of subtraction cutting and make interesting shapes and forms to give the clothing different volumes. Although some of the garments might look a bit elementary, it does involve some attractive colour combination and illustrate the beauty of lines, creasing and draping with a quite straightforward format. In addition, it’s this style of simplicity that makes the garment effective and delicate which applies to the Japanese designers who has influenced and inspired him.

Reference :

[1] Tumblr (2001) Subtraction Cutting by Julian Roberts. Available from: http://julianand.com/ [ Accessed 17 October]

[2] University of Derby (2016) Julian Roberts Fashion Designer at the University of Derby Part 1. Available from:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2xnUoCVWbI [Accessed 30 October]

[3] University of Derby (2016) Julian Roberts Fashion Designer at the University of Derby Part 2. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC25scyJx9U [Accessed 30 October]

Ancient, traditional costumes are one of mine interest aspect in fashion, and Greek clothing style is one of my favourite among all the other.  The drape, the creases, the looseness and the delicacy that it creates on the stand and the fact that many fashion designers are in love with this sort of ‘Grecian look’.

The book ‘Fashion from ancient Egypt to the present day’ described the background /culture of Greek fashion, the importance of their hairdressing, the evolution of chiton during the history and the difference between man and woman’s fashion in ancient Greece. (P.32- 42) looking back to some examples of recent Grecian fashion – Valentino’s Spring 2016 couture collection and Chanel Resort 2018 show. Chanel’s collection titled ‘The Modernity of Antiquity’ which Luke Leitch expressed on the Vogue website:

Antique in its inspiration and true to the house in its articulation, this Chanel Resort collection was old-fashioned- no, ancient- fashion-in the best possible sense.

In comparison, Chanel’s collection is ‘pure antiquity’ where most of the garment depended on the textile aspect more than fashion as the texture of the fabric creates this ethnic /aboriginal sense, collaborates with jewellery and beads. On the other hand, Valentino’s Spring collection is only a kiss of the Grecian fashion where their focal point is the complex pattern on the fabric covered with gold accessories. However, this usage of the velvet composed of shiny texture and hollow pattern presents their professional skills and bold creativity.

Reference:

[1] Mila Contini (1965) Fashion from ancient Egypt to the present day. London: Paul Hamlyn Ltd

[2] Vogue – Sarah Mower (2016) Spring 2016 couture Valentino. Avaliable from:  https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/spring-2016-couture/valentino [Accessed 24 October 2017]

[3] Kerry Kolasa-Sikiaridi (2017) Greece GreekReport Chanel’s ‘Cruise Show’ Inspired By Ancient Greece! (Photos). Available from: http://greece.greekreporter.com/2017/05/04/chanels-cruise-show-inspired-by-ancient-greece-photos/ [Accessed 24 October 2017]

[4] Vogue – Luke Leitch (2017) Chanel Resort 2018 Available from: https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/resort-2018/chanel [Accessed 24 October]

Photograph of a woman wearing Oliver Theyskens’ ready to wear collection 1998 in the book ‘The Belgians an unexpected fashion story ‘ page 12, photographer unknown 

The real garment in the performance 1998

Taylor Swift’s  Gothic zombie look in  ‘What You Made Me Do’ Music Video  

Online article about the origin of the Gothic style by the Victoria and Albert Museum  http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/the-gothic-style/

The research began by searching books from the library website. However, instead of picking the book that was originally chosen, the book ‘The Belgians an unexpected fashion story ‘ which was right next to the chosen one, appears more eye-catching of its design. After a short flip, my attention was clutched by Oliver Theyskens’ work. The rough texture, the vintage shade, the natural drape, the pasty looking modal and the relation between the garment and a giraffe all made me consider the meaning behind this garment and the inspiration of the designer.

The book doesn’t provide much information about the work or the artists, therefore I moved from the book to an online Vogue article about the actual catwalk show wrote by Laird Borrelli-Persson. She described the show as ‘ intended as a visual calling card’ and she thought that the show has an  “out of the tomb” vibe. The author focused on the fabric of  Theyskens’ work Then moved on to some interesting details of the appearance and the style then she finished the article in-depth with the concept and the influence of the idea:

“Though the collection was dubbed ”gothic ” by Vogue, the designer says that at the time he loved to look at Florentine studies of anatomy, as well as the 17th and 18th centuries and also the end of the 19th century, with its beads and lace. ”I was just putting together all these passions. I was also discovering how to do voluminous garments, it as the first collection where I put trains on the dresses. When I look back, some of the charms of this collection is that I can tell how much I’m trying different types of things as a discoverer or explorer, I was really doing things mostly for the first time.”[1]

It’s surprising to found out how this vintage style garment can link to ‘gothic’ or even anatomy. Referring to the topic ‘gothic’, It reminds me the image of Taylor Swift’s zombie look in her new song video: dirty pale blue dress with messy hair and creepy makeup. Similarly, the two garment both creates an old and uncomfortable vibe and the structure or the shape of the clothing are both simple. In contrast, instead of a pathway mocking and revealing the truth, Oliver Theyskens’ collection demonstrates directly of his intention and creativity to the audience.

Finally, I went to search for the origin of gothic style, it is said that ”In the area around Paris known as the Ile-de-France, a new style of art developed. Because of its supposedly Germanic character, this style was called ‘Gothic’, first by 16th-century Renaissance writers and again by 19th-century historians.”[2] Except from this point, I couldn’t find any more relative information on the website. In conclusion, the usage of the online source could be quite helpful to improve the research, although it might be slightly hard to distinguish between reliable and unreliable resources.

Reference and bibliography

[1]https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/fall-1998-ready-to-wear/olivier-theyskens

[2]http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/the-gothic-style/

[3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21t3MvQ-UGc&t=190s

[4]https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=gothic&safe=strict&rlz=1C1KMZB_enGB540GB717&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiyo_2-nfvWAhVCNhoKHTavB8cQ_AUICigB&biw=1366&bih=662

[5]https://www.pinterest.co.uk/search/pins/?q=goth%20fashion&rs=guide&term_meta[]=goth%7Ctyped&add_refine=fashion%7Cguide%7Cword%7C0