04 01 2016 AAU Newspaper

san francisco | academy of art university |

April 2016 volume 2 | page 15

Style Photo by Alexandria Ceranski.

INSIDE

Flipboard: Fashion and technology meet in a revolutionary new journalism platform. Page 16.

UC Hastings: Director of Fashion Merchandising Jinah Oh spoke to the law school about the paradox of real and counterfeit fashion, and how they coexist. Page 17.

Meagan Morrison: The fashion illustrator’s gold pencils, markers and paints helped La Prairie launch their new cosmetic product. Page 18.

Elena Fong: The personal shopper shares her experience working at Anthropologie and offers tips for styling customers. Page 19.

page 16 | April 2016 volume 2 | academy of art university | san francisco

STYLE FLIPBOARD

Flip into the digital era of fashion

By Faye Harris At the intersection of fashion and technology meets a new generation of fashion writers. Flipboard, the company that has revolutionized digital media, has partnered with the Academy of Art University’s Fashion Journalism program, becoming the first official platform for journalism students to present their work in a visually stunning and industry grade way; it’s quality content presented in a beautiful magazine style format.

The news and magazine application that’s operable on a smartphone, tablet and desktop will provide a visual voice for the students using cutting-edge digital and social media skills, quintessential to an increasingly image-driven culture. Digital magazines have an important place in the world of fashion and social media, said Flipboard’s Head of Curation and Community Mia Quagliarello. “They are an effortless and beautiful way to package and share classwork and social media activity, publicly or in private groups.”

The natural progression of print to digital has allowed for the emergence of a creative online community

that reaches increasingly diverse audiences. “With over 300 million Instagrammers and more than 1.5 billion active Facebook accounts, the market for quality visual content is exponential,” said Director of Fashion Journalism Stephan Rabimov.

The Academy’s Fashion Journalism magazine on Flipboard is a highly curated selection of the work of the academy’s BA and MA fashion journalism students.

Quagliarello spoke with the Academy about the rise of Flipboard’s use in education, the key elements to starting your own magazine on the platform, and how they’ve managed to create such an incredible user growth on a global scale. Hint: It’s as easy as 1-2-3!

Q: What impact does the print magazine world have on Flipboard’s app/desktop presentation philosophy and process?

A: Every impact! Flipboard was 100 percent inspired by print magazines and the desire to bring print’s immersive layouts, breathtaking typography, full-bleed photography and deep journalistic expertise to mobile devices.

We were even inspired by print’s advertising—our business model is centered

Mia demos Flipboard with Ashton Kutcher. Photo courtesy of Flipboard.

Flipboard in the early days. Photo courtesy of Flipboard.

around bringing beautiful print-style advertisements to phones and tablets. You might read VOGUE as much for the ads as the stories, right? Well, it should be the same on digital. Flipboard is that place.

Q: How do you start a magazine on Flipboard? What element(s) is/are key?

A: It’s as easy as 1-2-3(4-5): 1. Pick five or more topics of interest—this is the first step to personalizing your Flipboard.

2. Create an account.

3. Connect Flipboard to your social networks—this part is optional, but things like tweets, Instagram pictures and Tumblr posts can be creative sources of content for your Flipboard Magazines.

4. Flip great stories: see the + button in the lower right corner on most items in Flipboard? Tap on that to flip an article, photo, video or SoundCloud item into your magazine. You can also install the “Flip it” button to your browser bar and add any Web page to your magazine.

(Get such curator tools here: about.flipboard.com/tools/) 5. Share with friends and followers. Now that you’ve packaged up all these fascinating stories, photos, videos and songs, share your Flipboard Magazine with the world via email, text and social media.

Q: What are the main drivers of Flipboard’s phenomenal user growth and success around the world?

A: Word of mouth. As Apple’s App of the Year in 2010, Flipboard got off to a rocket start and that buzz continues today, but driven more from sharing than just awareness. Now we find people don’t just use Flipboard to read and connect with things they are interested in following, but also as a platform to share ideas—which continues the great word of mouth. Our fans, from tech

Mia Quagliarello. Photo by Ashleigh Maule-Ffinch. enthusiasts to teachers, are our best evangelists.

Be everywhere your users are. Though we started as an iPad app, we have since launched on every major device and platform, including the Web. We’ve also localized the app for 25 regions, with unique content experiences for places like China, Japan, Russia, UK, Brazil and many more countries.

A true valuing of great journalism and its creators.

From the beginning, we partnered with the world’s best publishers—outlets like The New York Times, National Geographic, Vanity Fair, WSJ, The New Yorker and so many others—to beautifully render their stories for mobile and to create a healthy ecosystem where great, definitive journalism is read, shared and supported well into the future.

Q: Flipboard’s use in Education is on the rise; can you share some of the (un) expected ways Flipboard is utilized in the classroom(s)?

A: Absolutely, we’re inspired by educators on Flipboard every day. There are so many ways they use Flipboard. (We cover a lot of them in our Flipboard for Educators blog and magazine).

For one, there is the Class Curriculum magazine. These are magazines that contain articles that are the subject of class discussion or that supplement class discussions.

Here’s an example: Things AP Econ Students Should Know— this teacher’s class is over, but he used his magazine to collect real-world examples of theories and concepts they were talking about in his classroom.

There’s the Collaborative magazine. This is a way students can curate content together and feel empowered to impact the conversations in their classroom. Here’s an example out of the University of Central Florida: Cybersecurity. The teacher who started this magazine is also part of a research team that measured the effectiveness of Flipboard Magazines on class engagement.

There’s the Student Activity magazine, which packages up content around team sports, school newspapers and literary magazines, clubs, language learning and more. See this example from Palo Alto High. In fact, ‘Paly’ has all of its student publications organized into Flipboard Magazines. This not only creates a beautiful, sharable package for all of their hard work, but it also gets their stories into Flipboard’s ecosystem of 34,000 topics—so anything they write that’s applicable to those topics could be surfaced to readers interested in the very thing they’re writing about. It’s a smart, scalable way to distribute content.

Q: You follow the Academy’s Fashion Journalism magazine; is there an article that particularly stood out for you?

A: I really like getting to know the students and alumni and learning from them: how they got to where they are, how they use social media, what motivates them...

It’s fun and inspiring to learn about the real people who’ve emerged from the program.

Q: In an era of cross-brand collaborations who would

san francisco | academy of art university | April 2016 volume 2 | page 17

STYLE UC HASTINGS

Splurge or save: how real and counterfeit fashion coexist

By Angela Han

“Fashion isn’t just about runways,” Jinah Oh, Director of Fashion Merchandising at Academy of Art University’s School of Fashion, said to students at her UC Hastings College of the Law guest lecture. On Tuesday, March 29, UC Hastings Professor in Residence Dana Beldiman invited Oh into her classroom to discuss the complex system of the fashion industry as a premise to Intellectual Property law theory and practice.

Beyond the gloss and glamour, fashion is an intricate realm that’s part art and part business. And while its visual allure and tactile extravagance are undeniably magnetizing and inherently essential, such enchantment has eclipsed the fact that the fashion industry is a vital component to the global economy and exists on all levels.

Having worked as a brand and retail manager at luxury brands Escada and Cartier, along with being the co-founder of the astonishingly innovative skincare gadget, WAY, Oh is a fashion business savant. During her guest lecture, she outlined the basic structure and mechanisms of the industry, starting with the backbone—the supply chain.

Tracing a product from start to finish is a remarkably difficult task, particularly today in the age of globalization. The extensive journey is a labyrinth of sorts, a tangled, circuitous route that stretches across the world. This vast, diverse outsourcing structure is deployed at every phase from design and manufacturing to sourcing and retail.

As Oh succinctly put it, “You don’t want to put all your eggs into one basket.”

It all starts with an idea.

From inception, the idea goes through a series of creative processes that typically involve research, refinement, and the tentative trial-and-error method. This process is repeated an unforeseeable amount of times until the strongest concepts make it out alive and onto the runway.

Timing is of the essence, and if you’re not 12-16 months ahead then you’re behind.

Due to the nature of seasonal runway and retail cycles, most brands start planning long before their previous collections even make it to the sales floor. Traditionally, once designs were finalized and showcased on the runway, brands would have roughly six months to produce and deliver—that’s why fall collections are presented in the spring and vice versa.

But tradition is on its way out and overshadowing the antiquated methodology is an increasing demand for immediacy and accessibility.

Nobody wants to wait, nor do they want to shell out full designer retail prices, and as a result, consumers are flocking to fast fashion retailers.

Companies like H&M and Zara are two of the biggest players in the fast fashion sector that offer designer-inspired products at a fraction of the cost. By replicating designs from leading luxury brands like Celine and Yves Saint Laurent, fast fashion retailers are able to produce fashion trends—no matter how transient—at lightning speed. A fast fashion retailer can take a trend off the runway and deliver it to the sales floor in as little as two weeks.

This business strategy, though widely accepted, highlights an ubiquitous ethical dilemma that lacks an easy pragmatic solution.

Where is the line drawn

between creative expression and outright imitation? The matter of intellectual property is a prominent, divisive issue in the fashion environment. Businesses all over the world, big and small, exploit and capitalize on the creativity of others by churning out knockoffs of varying quality.

A quick stroll through Han City Plaza in China offers just a glimpse of the magnitude and impact of the counterfeit underworld that’s estimated at $1.77 trillion—a value that doesn’t reflect the considerable amount of furtive operations that go undetected.

At the forefront of the formidable market is China, a nation notorious for fostering the proliferation of non-authorized “fake” goods. Seoul is also becoming a hub for phony products. In the popular shopping area of Itaewon, counterfeit goods are categorized by quality through a letter grading system. At one end are the “C” products, generally the cheapest and lowest quality forgeries of the bunch, and at the other are the deceptively convincing “super A,” goods that are virtually indiscernible from their authentic counterparts.

Generally, only locals know of these “genuine fake” products as they’re hidden in the back away from the displays and are only accessible through specific requests. And while most businesses actively circumvent intellectual property conflicts, the consumers are the ones that are usually penalized for purchasing the sham goods.

Imitation is not always flattery, and in the fight against counterfeiting, many brands skirt the battle because contention, in many cases, is more harmful than helpful. Most products have short life cycles, and com-

would fit well with our many local topics.

And of course we hope to partner with more organizations leading the conversation around education, like EdSurge. This will be a big part of our work in the year ahead.

Q: What was the best advice you got while launching your career?

A: I had a first boss with a high bar from whom I learned so much. She taught me that the details matter— in your copy and in your attitude. She taught me you should be doing the next job up before expecting that you actually get that job. She showed me the joys of “work hard, play hard” and of a good sample sale.

Director of Fashion Merchandising speaking to students at UC Hastings College of the Law on March 29. Photo by Bob Toy. pounded with time, financial costs, and a complex web of players and levels, many companies choose not to register their designs because such endeavors are simply unviable. While some luxury houses including the likes of Gucci, Christian Louboutin, and Alexander McQueen have taken legal action against the imitators, the majority of brands forgo such pursuits.

Under the surface, fashion is a paradox and what is damaging is simultaneously beneficial. Though knockoffs undercut the sales of au-

thentic designer goods and dilute brand value, many brands look to the counterfeit market to gauge the popularity of their designs. Sales of affordable replicas anchor style, solidifying a trend’s prevalence and strengthening public interest in the original design and brand. It’s a deeply rooted contradiction that shows no signs of waning.

Angela Han is a B.A. Fashion Journalism student at Academy of Art University.

FLIPBOARD Flipboard be interested in collaborating with?

A: We would love to partner with the companies our readers use and care about and that are natural extensions of where and how people use Flipboard. For example, Starbucks: “Flipboard and coffee” is a meme we hear a lot about on social media and partnering with a company like Starbucks would make a ton of sense.

Working with Eventbrite, Yelp and AirBnB would be amazing. Not only are they companies our readers really use and love, but they create content and listings that

Q: Outside Flipboard, where can one run into you? How do you spend limited free time?

A: Probably in one of San Francisco’s live music venues: last year, I saw 51 concerts.

Not bad for a full-time working mom of two! I’m obsessed with electronic music, and I probably use SoundCloud as much as I use Flipboard.

Q: Do you have a daily mantra?

A: “Go with the flow.” And “Always be learning.”

Q: What is the most important question on your mind at this stage of your career?

A: Good question! Well, I’m super passionate about media, pop culture and technology, and I always want to be at the intersection of these industries. My job at Flipboard is squarely in this sweet spot: my world here involves knowing/curating the very best in journalism, social media content, music and so much more. It doesn’t get much better than that!

Also, for my whole career, I’ve been the “voice” of various companies—MTV Networks, YouTube and now

Flipboard. Now I’m working on developing my own voice at places like Medium, on the Burning Man blog and my new blog Disco Nap. The most important questions on my mind right now are: how to “do it all” and where is media going next so I can be right there with it.

Originally published on Huffpost Media. Faye Harris is a M.F.A. Fashion Journalism student at Academy of Art University.

page 18 | April 2016 volume 2 | academy of art university | san francisco

STYLE MEAGAN MORRISON

Made of gold

By Alexandria Ceranski Makeup brushes and paintbrushes went hand in hand at the Westfield Mall Bloomingdales this past February. La Prairie, a Swiss skincare and cosmetics line, hosted a launch party event for their newest product, Cellular Radiance Perfecting Fluid Pure Gold. The cosmetics entrance at the mall was filled with makeup chairs manned by makeup artists dressed in black with sparkling silver jewelry.

Customers young and old with appointments to have their makeup professionally done eagerly marched up to the chairs. Those that were just passers by saw the huge replica of the product standing on tables in between loose gems and were encouraged by the makeup artists to take a seat.

This being a cosmetics line from Switzerland, it is bound by the idea of innovation. Infusing three types of gold into the product allowed them to reach a level of radiance never achieved before. The idea of using gold in skincare inspired the name for this event, The Golden Hour. More inspiration for The Golden Hour took an artistic approach.

The golden hours of the day are when the sun sets and when the sun rises, both times that artists and photographers love. That being said, the event wouldn’t be complete without an artist working alongside the cosmetics team.

A woman with her Bristol pad and a palette of only gold pencils, markers and paints laid out in front of her sat at a nearby table. This woman has had her work featured in Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour,

Meagan Morrison draws a customer at La Prairie’s launch party at Bloomingdales in San Francisco. Photo by

Alexandria Ceranski.

Vanity Fair and posted on supermodel Karlie Kloss’ Instagram. She had just drawn for a collaboration with IMG and Gemfields during Fall 2016 New York Fashion Week at the Skylight Clarkson. La Prairie had hired New York-based fashion illustrator Meagan Morrison to draw customers in gold after their makeup was done!

Morrison was seated in the center behind the makeup chairs, and once the customers were introduced to her and told they were going to have their portrait done, their eyes lit up. While smiling and chatting with each customer, she periodically holds out each portrait to examine her progress then immediately slips back into a focus of a true artist. Brushes and pencils glided across the paper until

effortless and elegant lines and swirls made up a human face. Not only did she draw customers, but she also drew the staff from the event and some “higher-ups” at the Bloomingdale’s location.

One customer’s mouth fell open and her eyes widened after getting handed her portrait from Morrison.

After she was able to get a few words out, the customer exclaimed: “They made me look so gorgeous.

Look! Look at this! I’m so surprised!” In regards to the whole experience the customer said, “It was very professional, and they made me look so natural and bring out all of my features. I was surprised, I didn’t expect this! I didn’t expect they would give me a big makeover and do the portrait, so I just did my own [makeup].

This is a very complete invi-

Meagan Morrison’s array of gold pencils, markers and brushes. Photo by Alexandria Ceranski.

tation, not just to come here to do the portrait. It is very extensive. I am very pleased.”

On Morrison’s lunch break, she was kind enough to allow me to interview her about her work and life as a fashion illustrator. Ever since she was a little girl, she had always loved painting and drawing. In kindergarten, she had painted a picture of a bicycle. The teacher wanted to keep the painting, but Morrison abruptly said no. “[I was very] possessive of the finished product,” she said with a laugh. Always finding art as a natural and innate talent of hers, she found herself trying to get into abstract art in high school. It was very competitive, so she veered away from it for a while. For her first degree, she studied business at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. After

college, she found herself wanting to get back into art and fashion. “I just didn’t know how the two could correlate,” Morrison said. “I worked in the industry of fashion, asking questions and someone suggested that I [look] into fashion illustration.” This lead her to going into the program at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in 2009.

In Morrison’s work, you will find a beautiful mixture of fashion and travel. When asked what her inspiration was, she responded, “I love to have my illustrations rooted in the context of travel or destination, having that inspire what the person is wearing, what the surrounding is.” She brought up a series she had done on her trip to Brazil. “I included favelas on a bathing suit on an illustration and I included an aerial of Ipanema Beach in a girl’s jumpsuit just to integrate in a conceptual way a destination and fashion.”

For her client work, it depends on their needs. Based on the assignment, she will look up vintage work and find references that correlate with that project.

The way her eyes lit up and how her mouth curved into a little smile when talking about the progression of her career really allowed the passion to show through. Considering how her career has grown in the past six years, she is very excited to see what the future holds. “[Art has] built a sense of community,” Morrison said. “I feel like every time I go to a new city, I see people reaching out to me from different places, and it’s amazing to connect with people from

san francisco | academy of art university | April 2016 volume 2 | page 19

STYLE MEAGAN MORRISON

ELENA FONG

Tips from Elena Fong, Personal Stylist at Anthropologie

By Samantha Rathman

Fashion journalism student Alexandria Ceranski and fashion illustrator Meagan Morrison. Photo courtesy of

Alexandria Ceranski.

all over the world, people I didn’t even know knew of me or had an awareness of my work.” Six and a half years ago, she knew she was taking a risk jumping into an industry that may have been perceived as outdated, but the revival was a pleasant shock to her. “For it to have such a huge revival as a result of the social media and the ability and interest to promote yourself through social media, it’s just so exciting,” she said. The ever-growing popularity of art being combined with fashion is what drives Morrison’s career. It is how she has booked so many jobs, clients and events; events like The Golden Hour.

Never working with La Prairie before, when the opportunity presented itself, Morrison took it by the reins. Since the illustration concept was so deeply knit in this product’s promotion, it was important for her to have the right materials on hand. To create the drawings, she used gold acrylic paint, Tombow markers and colored pencil. This allowed her to get different gradients of gold and to strengthen a new way of interpreting a portrait. Her techniques and artistry certainly paid off.

When asked what was the best customer reaction to a drawing, she shared, “One woman said she was going to write me into her will because she loved the drawing so much!” Morrison could feel each customer’s excitement as each sat down in the chair. The concept of being drawn in such an interpretative way was both intriguing and unique for most of them.

Not only were the customers

lively, but the team worked very well together.

A sincere and genuine nature is a strong component in a person who possesses it. Morrison is definitely one of those people. She speaks so highly of the teams she has worked with through this whole experience and is so appreciative of everything they did to make her comfortable.

Between having a steady customer flow, making sure she has down time, and making everything manageable, Morrison felt right at home. “Everyone has been so pleasant and really respectful and appreciative [about] what it takes to draw live and to make sure that everything was facilitated from just getting all of the supplies together and having everything set up for me when I came,” she said.

Following Morrison on Snapchat is an adventure in itself. While she was in the city, she snapped all of her travels and destinations.

While she was at The Golden Hour event, she was snapping her portraits with the person she drew, and she was giving “inside-scoop” commentary. At the end of the interview Morrison concluded that her first trip to San Francisco had been nothing but fun, exciting, inspirational and insightful. The only tip she gave to first time visitors is to bring walking shoes!

For more information on Morrison, visit www. meaganmorrison.com.

Alexandria Ceranski is a Fashion Journalism student at Academy of Art University.

Any fashion lover should be very familiar with the store Anthropologie. As a merchandising student, my love for the company comes in the form of their extremely opulent store window displays made from everyday, recycled materials.

The FSH 280 styling course was lucky enough to host guest lecturer Elena Fong.

Fong is a personal shopper at Anthropologie, which means that she is somewhat of a clothing clairvoyant, she gets to know the customer then picks out pieces that she thinks they would like and fits their lifestyle.

Fong, who started her personal styling career with the company six years ago in 2010, began working out of the Anthropologie Berkeley location. She recently made the move to Anthropologie’s flagship San Francisco store, one of the highest volume and highest grossing stores out of the chain. In her hour-long presentation, Fong gave insight into the life of a personal shopper and what it takes to be successful at the craft. Decked out in a tapestry-esque kimono, Fong looked every bit the part of an Anthro employee. This is something that is very important as she stated the customers tend to look to the merchandising and employees for inspiration on how they would like to dress. Coincidentally FSH 280 instructor Danielle Wallis is an Anthro alumni, having worked in visual merchandising at the Soho New York store during her college years. Between the two women it is clear that there is definitely an “Anthro twist” as Fong likes to put it.

Both of the women exuded a sense of whimsy in their outfit choices and radiated warmth in their personalities.

The presentation kicked off with an interactive style assessment. Students were encouraged to fill out a two-page questionnaire, which would narrow their style down to fit in with the three categories of styles that Anthropologie caters to. Within just a few minutes students deciphered whether they fit into the preppy/classic, feminine or boho classification. The questionnaire is the starting point for Fong when meeting with a new customer. Every shopper tends to identify with one of these core aesthetics, although certain people blend the lines fitting into multiple categories.

Fong then proceeded

Past meets present. Academy of Art University instructor and Anthropologie alumna Danielle Wallis poses with Elena Fong, current personal stylist of the Anthropologie SF flagship store. Photo courtesy of the School of Fashion. to explain the different kinds of customers that shop at Anthropologie, from the browser to the regular customer, the special occasion shopper to the mom shopper who is overwhelmed and needs as much help as possible. Anyone who has worked retail knows that these are staple customer prototypes for any and every store.

How do you cater to such a diverse range of clients?

Here are a few top tips from Elena Fong: • Know your customer: get insight into what her typical day is like. Also pay attention to the clothing they come into the store wearing, since this is obviously something they feel comfortable in.

• Engage and relate to the customer: Be empathetic to their lifestyle, try to put yourself in their shoes. Also try to find some way to relate to her, whether it is about what kind of food you both might like or a movie you both might have seen, it is ultimately about establishing a relationship so they will want to come back.

• More is better than less: When pulling items for a client bring as many things as possible, having too many options is better than not having enough.

• Create and give tips on how to put together a whole look, from shoes to undergarments, all the way down to hair and makeup styling tips. It is important to give every bit of knowledge so that the customer can feel 100% confident when executing a look.

• When a customer tries on a piece of clothing let them react to it before you jump in with opinions: Don’t jump in immediately and say “I love this,” because ultimately it is about what the customer likes, not what the stylist likes.

• Lastly, be honest with

customers. It shouldn’t always be about pushing products or sales. Genuine connections and honesty is what will bring customers back.

Being a stylist ultimately comes down to a few characteristics. You must have the basic knowledge of silhouettes and what looks good on certain body types.

You need to know what pieces look good together, which all has to do with taste and your ability to envision an outfit that fits within the customer’s personality. You need to have a somewhat “go with the flow” attitude, as Fong put it. You need to be a quick thinker for any unexpected question that a client throws your way.

Networking is also a huge part of styling, and of most jobs in general.

The last tip that Fong left the students with was to build a relationship with neighbors in your community. She explained that Anthropologie holds farmers markets with local vendors to bring in customers but also to encourage locally made items.

There is no doubt that Anthropologie has honed in on a specific niche. Their brand identity is quirky, whimsical, globally inspired with a modern edge. They understand their customers, their product offerings and most important of all, they understand who they are— which is something that we can all learn from. Even if you’re not aspiring to be a personal stylist, I hope that Fong’s insights are helpful since patience, honesty and a congenial attitude go a long way in ensuring success for anyone in any field.

Samantha Rathman is a B.F.A. Fashion Merchandising student at Academy of Art University.