Asos Green

I have been given Asos green as the company I am going to be designing for. I have been researching into various areas of how ASOS green promotes this on their website. At first I thought Asos green room was one brand but it calibrates with Made, People Tree, and Asos own brand Asos Africa.

So what does the range consist off?

- The range is about stylish but affordable prices between £15-£50

- For every item sold by Asos Africa the brand will donate £5 to Soko Kenya

-Jessica Ogden designs for the Asos Africa range (she has recently designed for Fred Perry)

- The Green Room is a selection of Asos which is dedicated to brands with a social and environmental ethos.

Here is a page from the Asos website about the products they offer:

TRENDS LACE/JEWEL COLOURS

The Target Audience!

I have researched into a range of Eco designers, Stella McCartney, Made, Top shop Eco, People Tree, and Katherine Hamnett!

One of the key points of the brief is that you have to research into the potential customer

What sort of person would buy these Eco clothes?

What Age Range?

Is the brand following the trend? and does this effect the customer?

The Internet doesn't always give you the right answers about the brand or tell you what sort of market the brand is aiming at. I decided to write to the brands by email to find out more! By writing to People Tree I really did get a wider insight on what the brand was about...

My email:

Sent: 13 October 2011 22:10

To: PR

Subject: Questions about the brand

Hi there,

As a part time student currently studying fashion.

I am looking into Eco Friendly brands.

I have been given the People Tree brand to design a collection for

and I was wondering whether you would be able to give me some more

information on the brand itself.

What is your target market?

What would be the typical profile of one of your customers?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank You for your kind attention.

Kind Regards

Olivia Mullin

Response:

Hi Olivia

Typical profile would be: females aged 25-35, some interest in fashion,

socially aware. Although we compete with the high street, our production

turnaround time will never be as quick so we will never be able to

produce 'flash-in-the-pan' trends, instead we work with WGSN, trend

prediction agency to predict trend to design towards.

Research has shown that People tree customers also shop at M&S, Monsoon,

Toast, Whistles.

Good luck with your project

Kind regards

Lucy

Bamboo

Packaging is a huge problem in the UK! We have far to much of it and it's never ECO friendly method! So many companies use lots of a packaging as this is the main selling point! Top shop print on all there bags Please re use/ recycle. But i'm sure as the consumer we don't think twice about thinking to take out a used carrier bag?

I came across this company Bamboo recommended by a man I spoke to in London. Bamboo is a Eco enterprise company that offers compo stable packaging solutions its all about seeking alternative packaging that won't damage our environment!

The product itself...

Our innovative product line is 100% compo stable and made from non-GMO materials. Our goal is to help institutions move towards a sustainable packaging practice in an economically feasible way.

Compo stable products are made from renewable resources, making them more sustainable than traditional petroleum-based plastic. There are no waste waters, effluent gas, or residue discharged during our production process. All our products are designed to be composted in municipal and industrial aerobic composting facilities.

Although it's a alternative for food packaging I still found it interesting to see how the company works and that if the company was the expand it could design for retail packaging for the high street.

Fabric Samples...

Whilst in London I took a trip back to Soho collecting more fabric samples to go in my sketch book! However I had the challenge of having to make sure they were sustainable fabrics. I was quite shcoked at how alot of the Soho fabric shops did not stock this particualr farbic or couldnt be completely sure where it came from. This said to me the size and low demand for Eco favbrics. One shop that was very helpfulwas Broadwick Silks they had a huge variety of different types of silks from all overthe world. The man in the shop gave me a name of a company called Bamboo it was interesting to look at there website and see what sustainable methods they used.

But is silk sustainable?

Manufactoring silk into fibre is sustainable. The silk worms are used to obtain the silk which obviously means silk is sustainable if silk is created by silk worms. There are many different ways to create silk but the most common way is now by large corporate farms that use alot of chemicals this comes from dying silks which is not a sustainable method. If the silk is not dyed this would make the silksustaiable. I got a sample of a fabric I liked whiched had been un dyed I cannow add this to my sketch book!

Picturesof the different fabric samples I have collected...E leather, broadwick silks un dyed (london) and green fibres which I found very interesting as they are a small company creating Eco Home wear!

Using gel pens and photoshop

Work Experience in London!

I took a week of college in order to do work experience with Breast Cancer Care this is one of their biggest charity events held in London! Hillary Alexander (twice crowned fashion journalist of the year) styled the catwalk which was really interesting and inspiring to see how she matched outfits together she knew how tomake something maybe not so great... look great!

There were top designers featuring on the catwalk including Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, Stella McCartney (who I'm currently studying in my current brief) , Catherine Walker, Roberto Cavalli, Candy Anthony andVivien Sheriff. The quality of the clothes were amazing!! You can tell when something is couture just seeing it go down the catwalk here are some photographs I took whilst in London.

The Fur and the fury...

This is one of the biggest debates in the Fashion industry can wearing fur be an advantage or will it just cause fury within animal rights campaigners?

-Not long ago supermodels refused to wear it...but gradually fur has made it back onto the catwalk.

Fur has a eco-advantage of being biodegradable however on the other hand theres the ethical issue of furs coming from wild animals.

The british Fur label Hockley:

"There is no cruelty in the fur trade. We have invested £5Million in humane methods"

Globally fur sales have increased by 70 percent in the past decade. This doesn't tally with the view in the nineties that the fur was as dead as the animals making the coats. Surely this shows something is being done in the fashion industry and animals are not facing cruelty?

When a fur garment or product carries the OA label this says that the fur has came from a country where welfare regulations of standard governing are in force. The OA label was introduced by the fashion industry itself this gave them the power to clear and make a gradual disappearance of the fur farms that don't meet regulations and they can begin to make animal cruelty a distant memory.

- Advertising Harpers Bazaar in Vogue, Vogues publisher has a international policy of accepting fur advertising However the British version will still not feature Fur in its editorial pages.

Vogue "fur is part of fashion and we will continue to report on it'

So this is where the Eco situation comes in animal rights campaigns against is it right to kill a animal just for fashion?

"The animals being bred for their coats are in really awful conditions and don't have any kind of a life at all. I dislike fur both because of the cruelty to animals and because of the kind of social statement that it makes. It's absolutely disgusting how mink are raised just for some idiot to look fashionable and rich"- Stella McCartney

Applying the Golden Ratio to my work...

Today I have been looking at the Golden Ratio, in mathematics and arts this a technique that is used a lot. Many artists and architects have proportioned their works to approximate the golden ratio. I applied this to my work today measuring the waist of a size 12 mannequin and dividing by 1.618 (the golden ratio) I then used this measurement to create a triangular shape and played withthe shapes on the mannequin.

Below is my outcome:

Sustainable Fashion

Sustainable Fashion is part of our current brief its very important thing many fashion designers are starting to consider and the clothing industry is growing vastly so are the harmful gases released into the atmosphere. Also known as ECO fashion its where the product is designed with the consideration of the environmental impact it may have 'carbon footprint' Fashion designers are beginning to introduce materials that are environmentally friendly.