Vogue's Fashion Night Out 10/09/09

This was such a lively, fashionable night, with so much happening all around London's West End shopping district. From 6pm till around 11pm there were in store events, complimentary drinks, and even mini catwalk shows and photoshoots.

This was a global event in all fashion capitals, and if you click the link below you can see what it

was all about from a star studded advert they were showing for New York's Fashion Night Out.

http://www.fashionsnightout.com/

Here is Vogues review of London's Fashion Night Out.

http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/daily/090521-fashions-night-out.aspx

We started off the night by having drinks on the top floor of Urban Outfitter's, listening to a live DJ set and having a browse round the store, the whole atmosphere was great! There is also a polaroid exhibition going on at the moment showing polaroid cameras from over the years.

http://blog.urbanoutfitters.com/features/polaroid

Tops for sale to celebrate the event, all money goes to the 'Crisis' charity

Liberty

Liberty had there 'Hermes Pour Liberty' event on and were serving french martinis upstairs! I loved this amazing length of scarves they had tied attached and hung from the top floor.

A window display made up of scarf boxes for the new Hermes collection made for Liberty.

In Liberty they were allowing visitors to try on scarves, or get themselves styled up, and photographed wearing them by a professional photographer. Hermes brought a French feel to Liberty, which is usually very traditionally British.

There were live models in a few of the window displays, this is Louis Vuitton's below.

Here are a couple of photo that I took of live window displays at Zara on Oxford Street

In Chanel on Bond street we queued to view an amazing photoshoot with Erin O'Connor and Daisy Lowe. With probably only about 30 people upstairs in Chanel it was a great experience, as we were right at the front, able to view the interviews, the shoot and the styling.

Anyone interested in Fashion I would definitely recommend this to next time it comes around. There was so much to offer with lots of things to go and see or even take part in. This really was a celebration of fashion!

RANKIN LIVE - exhibition

What can I say?! Rankin's work absolutely amazed me, he has had such broad range of interests when it comes to photography, not only photographing the leggy supermodels. But he also photographs his family, or random strangers that he has taken interest to. There was even an old fashioned photobooth for visitors to get there own photo taken in black and white passport style...uuurrrm as you can see above! Lots of fun!

He splits his vast exhibition of works into categories, which give a meaning to the photographs, a really interesting section was where he morphed himself into different beings....him as a boy, and as an old man (you can see this below) , his face as a pig (below also), him kissing himself, him as each of the spice girls....really you have to see this to appreciate the humour of this one!

Aswell as his amazing fashion photography where he plays with shadows, colour and the sillhouette, he has another section of the exhibition that interests me..... There is a part of the exhibition where there is a tatty looking leather sofa in the middle surrounded by photos of people sitting on it all doing different things, these photos were placed in a waiting room area with the sofa in the middle, Rankin describes how fun it was to see the look of realisation on the persons face when they notice that they are sitting on the sofa where all the photographs surrounding them were photographed.

Going to this exhibition I appreciate Rankin's work a lot more than I did before, I never realised quite how broadly he has worked and it has been nice to see all the stages of his ever growing career.

Week Visual Merchandising for Urban Outfitters Oxford Street

There are so many reasons why I love Urban Outfitters, from the layout of the shop, to the lively new music they play all around the store and most of all their amazing clothes and accessories!

I jumped at the chance for this work experience that the head Visual Merchandiser of the UK stores offered me, I always enjoy set design for photoshoots, therefore styling up the oxford street flagship store would really be a great experience for me.

As soon as I arrived I was shown around the store and then had a rifle through a whole book full of photographs and images sourced which fit with the two themes there are running through the store. 'Hyper Hyper' is one and the other is 'Breakfast Club'.

Hyper Hyper is very 80's inspired, with bright colours, a disco theme and alot of body-con sillhouettes.

Breakfast Club was my favourite, based around the film, with retro prints, and vintage florals, more of a 'country girl in the city' kind of feel.

At the time of my work experience it was prototype week. This is when the UK visual merchandising team takes all that it has researched and concluded from visits to to USA stores and reflects it into the Oxford Street UK Flagship store. All other Visual Merchandisers for Urban Outfitters from all around the UK then come to absorb the new changes, get to grips with the new themes and then go back to their original stores with ideas in mind for their change over.
There was a hybrid style to the shop which meant that there was a lot of mix and matching and filling up all available spaces, you could call it clutter, but in a really cool form. With shelves with books stacked, little ornaments, flasks and cameras all in the same sort of area.

As part of the Visual Merchandising team for this week we worked together on producing floor plans of what garments should hang where, putting together outfits for mannequins, and deciding on colour schemes in each area.

I learnt some new terminology too!

- A Face Out - this is when the last garment on the rail is dressed with either an accessory or scarf, and maybe even a cardigan of some sort over the top, this is to give the customer an idea of what the garment on the rail goes well with, encourages the customer to buy matching items!

- A Viniette - A stand made up of three mannequins at the front with a rail behind each that consists of what they are wearing

-2-way or a 3-way - Kinds of stands for clothing

I really enjoyed my time at Urban Outfitters and even managed to get an interview for a position as a part time sales associate ....I landed myself a lovely summer job!

www.urbanoutfitters.co.uk