FASHION STYLING COMMERICAL STYLING
KYLA GALLOWAY FASHION STYLING C3478366 LEEDS BECKETT UNIVERSITY
EDITORS NOTES
This journal aims to document the research, production and implementation of a commerical fashion shoot for the brand Urban Outfitters. The art direction will be lead by me, with the intetion to develop innovative and engaging visual content with a supporting strategic marketing and business objective. The propsal is centred around a logical brand extention, determined as a result of an Urban Outfitters brand analysis. The digital workbook accom
panied will demonstrate the learning of appropriate photographic techniques and styling skills. The visual outcomes included will be supported by contextualised brand, market and trend lead research, determined by globally sourced historic and contemporary material, produced to a professional industy standard. In summary, this journal aims to guide you through the reasoning and inspiration behind the final commercial campaign, with supporting research and rationale.
Urban Outfitters (UO) is an American lifestyle brand founded in 1970 by Dick Hayne and Scott Belair. The brand focus’ on connecting with consumers “through a unique combination of product, creativity and cultural understanding”. The initial concept was to reserve and pass on the authenticity of second hand clothing, home décor and jewellery to young consumers in a ‘casual and fun’ environment. (Urban Outfitters, 2017). By striving to connect with customers through unique products, UO distinguished themselves in a trend lead market, resulting in authentic fashion becoming the brands core values and signature aesthetic.
BRAND ANAYLSIS
UO now operates in over 200 stores globally ‘offering experiential retail environments’. The high street retailer sells a well-curated mix of women’s, men’s, accessories, beauty and homewear products. UO consists of both their own products, whilst also wholeslaes popular on trend brands such as Champion and Adidas, in additions to original concept of vintage remakes named “Urban Renewal”. UO focus on “injecting a sense of novelty into the high street” (Urban Outfitters, 2017). And despite the companies exit from the solely vintage market, their product assortment still dominates when it comes to catering for young, stylish, fashion cousious consumers with authenticity at it’s core. The brand remains focused on providing authentic products that supply their customers with the foundations to explore their individuality and style, encouraging experiementation and creativity within a trend lead market.
1. BRAND IDENTITY
An insight into how urban outfitters branding is constnatly being refreshed.
Brand identity is the ‘distinctive or central idea of a brand and how the brand communicates this idea to its stakeholders’ (De Chernatony, p45) Fashion brands develop their own identities of which consumers adopt when wearing and representing that particular brand. UO has a strong awareness of how their consumer’s lifestyles are constantly evolving and how they need to provide unique products to suit each occasion and milestone. This concept is reflected in UO brand identity, as UO completely rebrands itself as minimum of every six months. Everything is refreshed from the logo, to the bags, to the point of sale to keep consumers engaged and provide a consistently exciting store environment. With this information the new product launch will be reinvented 4 times a year on a seasonal and trend basis to keep in touch with the consumer base and their lifestyle needs adjustments.
2. BRAND IMAGE “URBAN OUTFITTERS is a lifestyle retailer dedicated to inspiring customers through a unique combination of product, creativity and cultural understanding.” (Urban Outfitters, 2017)
Brand image is the effect of brand identity and refers to the meaning and perception of the brand created by the consumer within the consumer’s mind. Cool, stylish and youthful are vital characteristics of the UO brand image. By focusing on a niche market UO adopts a target market strategy, this selective market then positively adopts their brand identity resulting in UO becoming the retail outlet everyone wants to be seen shopping in. Another key component of Urban Outfitters brand image is the element of community. This is demonstrated through their social media engagements whereby UO focus’ on selling the idea that UO is more than just a brand, it’s lifestyle and shopping there invites you to be apart of a wider style community. Therefore for this new product launch, it is crucial that UO focus’ on a target market stratergy with supporting media engagments in order to maintain connected with their customers in a familar way.
3. DIGITAL MARKETING UO brand identity and brand image are brought to life and reinforced through the UO digital world. Urban Outfitters uses a digital marketing technique - digital storytelling to take their customers on a journey of their brand. The journey they portray through carefully curated content, represents the most aspirational version of their audience’s life, resulting in customers feeling connected to the brand in a desirable way. Customer loyalty is at its lowest levels due to the lack of product diversity and high brand switching (Kusek 2016). Thus explain why digital marketing strategies are so influential in today’s competitive market. Digital storytelling engages with consumers via emotion by speaking to their hearts not just their style. UO employs this emotional branding technique to connect with their customers by catering for their both style needs, aspirations and ego through thoughtfully selected creative content. As a result, UO has a combined following of over 9 million people on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. (reference) UO uses each of these channels to facilitate a two-way conversation between the consumer and their brand, which contributes to the building of an emotional relationship even from behind a screen.
UO APP
MAKE PURCHASES ONLINE OF IN THE UO APP SCAN YOUR ID EVERYTIME YOU SHOP IN STORE ENABLE PUSH NOTIFACTIONS ENTER EXCLUSIVE COMPETTIONS CONNECT YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS LEAVE PRODUCT REVIEWS (Urban Outfitters, 2017)
Another way UO successfully uses digital marketing is through UO rewards loyalty programme. The mobile rewards app can be used when making purchasing in-store and online, to enter competitions, to create a product wish list and to engage with Urban Outfitters social media channels. All of which generates the user points, which contribute towards various rewards such as in-store discounts and experience features such as giveaways and exclusive event tickets. The use of these schemes encourages brand loyalty which can result in overcoming competition. It also invites consumers to actively engage with the brand and feel part of the wider style community. Another key digital marketing strategy of UO is the brand's responsiveness throughout there social media outlets. UO engages with there customers online in an equally valued conversation. This is demonstrated through various hashtags, one being #UOonYOU which gives the customers the opportunity to be featured on the UO Instagram page and stories, earns them points towards rewards, and more importantly encourages them to continue to engage with the brand in order to create cool content and become a “featured� member. This results in customers feeling valued and powerful, which today’s savvy consumer market requires. By actively responding to their consumers and building a relationship with them, UO benefits from a consistent flow of user-generated content which positively influences their overall brand identity and brand image.
4. BRAND VALUES Within today’s marketplace, it is becoming increasingly significant for brands to be thoroughly ethical and sustainable in order to receive a positive reaction from consumers. The fashion industry is publically located on the sustainability continuum and brands need to be aware of their position on the radar in order to make effective strategic and operational decisions. Urban Outfitters currently runs a Community Cares programme which encourages employees and customers to engage in meaningful conversations to enforce positive action and change. Diversity, equality, and inclusivity are at the heart of UO commitments and engaging with sustainability efforts, charitable programmes and global collaborations are always developing behind the scenes. UO actively takes steps both in stores and at their corporate campus to be eco-friendly from recycling to reviving buildings for retail outlets.
UO demonstrates there cultural understanding by responding to shifting consumer needs effectively. An example being when UO launched their home range, UO understood that their customers required stylish and cool home furnishing to accompany the aging target market who were moving into there own homes. By being customer and culturally focused, UO is able to anticipate their customer’s current and future needs and position themselves accordingly.
5. CONCEPT PROPOSAL
With the competitive marketplace and the fast fashion epidemic taking place, it is crucial for high street retailers to not only have a strong trend awareness, but to also undergo consistent logical brand extensions done in a timely manner. Brand extensions can be used to reinvent brands suffering from brand fatigue and introduce new distinctive brand features within the trend lead marketplace.
have tapped into the beauty industry through both their own product assortments, trend lead beauty products and through collaborating with other popular beauty outlets to increase their market coverage and provide more for their customers.
In order to be in line with the UO customer and produce something distinct from the current marketplace, I conducted some research into current consumer trends and Having conducted an UO brand buying habits. According to Forbes analysis, it became apparent that in 2018, consumers were eager to UO pride themselves on being a escape reality and were leaning lifestyle brand, and that the only towards brands that “offered peothing missing from the fashion re- ple moments of respite from the tailer was a beauty brand exten- daily grind”. However, as stated sion. Although UO currently does in the Expert Outlook 2019: Find stock some beauty products and balance report, in 2019 consumaccessories, they do not produce ers are shifting away from escapany of there own or have beauty ing reality and moving towards ad‘stations’ present within there re- dressing it. In effect the consumer tail stores. Similar retailers such market wants to be more sustainas Topshop and & Other stories are able and being so provides brands examples of fashion brands who with a competitive advantage.
Another key trend predicted in 2019 engages with the attitudes of the beauty industry as they become more inclusive and centred around self expression, and less about conforming to ideals. UO has engaged with the concept of inclusivity back in 2017 with there ‘class of 2017’ campaign aimed at adding diversity to the brand and empowering their customers by featuring a range of models including plus sized and transgender. However, in comparison to other brands, UO is consider to be behind on representation in the industry. Aerie the American competitor saw an 26% increase in sales after their body positivity campaign, demonstrating how engaging with ‘sensitive’ subject matters start a positive conversation of which can positively effects consumer’s perception of brands and influence their buying behaviour. In conclusion, for this commercial project I am going to combine the two elements of beauty and sustainability and introduce the concept of a Vegan Beauty range as a logical brand extension for the Urban Outfitters brand which adds to their lifestyle brand status whilst also promoting responsible consumerism The key elements of this project will be focused on the fashion styling and photography skills needed to create content suitable for a variety of media outlets such as Instagram, website content and campaigns. As well as proposing a suitable marketing concept that will work alongside the current Urban Outfitters landscape.
6. CRITICAL JOURNAL
INTROUDUCTION
Fashion is a form of visual art which communicates the culture around us. The digital era has been a catalyst for the recent revolutionary cultural shifts which have shaped our society and the transparency of fashion industry indefinitely. From the increased minority and female representations in politics to the glorified diverse and transgender voices in fashion. The ability to disseminate information globally in seconds has resulted in a powerful consumer culture with an intensified trend awareness. All part of this new era of experience, customers expect more than just a product; they want the brands from which they’re buying from to reflect the culture in which they live, the diverse people that surround them and the causes they support.
Having conducted an UO brand analysis and researched their customers, it is concluded that UO is a trend lead retailer beyond style. Being culturally and socially ‘on trend’ is on their agenda and contributes to the brands' personality, enabling them to connect with their customers on a deeper and more meaningful level. Likewise, the consumer market is increasingly becoming more socially and culturally informed, with the UO customer seeking innovative yet aesthetically pleasing solutions to accompany these lifestyle changes. Urban Outfitters goal is to enable their customers to easily engage with the brand by supporting their customer’s lifestyle rearrangements through logical brand extensions whcih serve their ‘lifetsyle’ brand status.
CUSTOMER PROFILE
The Urban Outfitters customer is typically between the ages of 16 – 30 years old, on the road to finding their own identity professionally, academically and socially. UO customers are seen to be early adopters and style aware, typically recognised as the cool kids of the high street with an urbanized, creative and effortless sense of style. These metropolitan hipsters are experimental with a desire to be different. Their fashionable edge is an aesthetical collision between beautiful bohemian pieces and a stylish street wear finish. These aspirational teens and young adults seek thoughtful pieces on faddish trends, with vintage sensibilities and have a value for nostalgia. They are recipient of new ideas and industry developments and are techy savvy when it comes to purchasing. These trend aware customers , have a desire to be sustainable with a keen interest in all things fashion, music, beauty and travel.
7. INDUSTRY LANDSCAPE
As the standardised ideas of ‘beauty’ are debated within the industry, consumers are looking towards the brands they trust for answers and direction. Beauty is a natural extension of the fashion industry and has become increasingly significant due to the growing MUA community and makeup pioneers such as Kylie Jenner. The sustainability of our aesthetical desires are also being scrutinized as a result of unethical animal testing practices which are no longer disguised as a result of favouring legalisations and the WWW (world wide web). Consumers are now motivated by their health, the environment and animal welfare concerns which has resulted in veganism becoming the latest lifestyle trend. Driven by the popularity to embrace a more ethically-conscious lifestyle, sales of vegan beauty products in the UK have risen 38% in 13 months. (Vogue, 2019). Vegan Beauty is the cutting edge, socially acceptable
solution with a high level of transparency. The demand is high, yet the supply is low and hard to locate especially those with an aesthetically pleasing and seasonal twist. This provides a perfect business opportunity for UO to dig into and be one of the first amongst the high street to provide such a sought after revolutionising product. According to WGSN ‘Beauty Community Rules’ 2019 report, its crucial that a digital community is present to help with the communication of the products and allow a space for users to discuss. Urban Outfitters currently has multiple Instagram accounts such as UO Home, UO Europe, and UO Men’s. For this new product proposal UO will benefit from creating separate social media outlet such as a UO Beauty Instagram in order to ensure the correct audience is engaging, whilst also ensuring existing accounts do not become over populated and give unclear brand messages.
Another action point will be to work with existing influences within the beauty industry. As stated by WGSN, exploring micro influencers with fewer than 100k followers can have a bigger impact than superstar talents thanks to higher engagement rates and parasocial relationships. Therefore, for the first UO beauty campaign, UO will recruit up and coming talent to create the looks, demonstrating how the products can be used by anyone to create promising looks and and not just by super talented makeup artists. Likewise, in order to appeal further to the vegan community a vegan model will be the face of the campaign with a short interview taking place during the shoot to give the overall campaign a more intimate and informative feel with a genuine sense of care and normality.
SPICEY COLOURS OF MOROCCO
This mood board was created for direction for the Make up Artsist and act beauty is becoming more and more important in the consumer market. Co with. This collection for UO will have a strong selling point surrounding co prints for SS19. This range of products will be named “spicey� and is inspir ticity which will appeal to the UO cool and auethnic customer. The seco on creating natural, glowing everyday glam. This collection has a focus collection is also inspired by the Morocan desert and sunset, g
ts as a colour pallete proposal for the first collection launch. Acording to WGSN, onsumers are more talented and seek more interesting products to experiement olours and pigmentation, in line with the colourful tailoring trend and mismatched red by the colours of Morroco, a place of growing popularity, culture and authenond collection is called base layer’ and the product assortment is more focused for inclusivity and provides a range of shades and tones to suit everyone. This giving the products a golden touch perfect for the summer launch. w
base layers
moroccan golden hours
EVERYDAY GLAM
PINKY AND ORANGE TONES TO CREATE AN EVERYDAY NATURAL GLAM . INSPIRED BY THE MORCCAN GOLDEN SUN AND FLAWLESS DESERT’.
8. BILL DIODATO & TERRY R For photographic direction I began my research with Bill Diodato (BD) a photographer known to explore the fine line between art and commercial photography. Dioadato’ work is aesthetically pleasing as a result of his strong subject focus. By having a distinctive value for his subject matter results in a more captivating and intimate collection. His imagery is able to do more than communicate a product, yet also communicate a story through the products use. I will apply this style to my own images by using only one subject for various looks created with makeup to ensure the collection is intimate. Likewise, to Diodato, the introduction of makeup means that we are exploring with an additional form of art for the commercial images. Diodato’ images are the result of great technical achievement and therefore I will experiment with various lighting and editing techniques to achieve the highest possible quality of imagery.
A secondary source for photographic direction is Terry Richardson, a fashion and portrait photographer known for his simple technique captured in the most daring, controversial and captivating ways. His signature style is simple and almost jarring, shot with the model standing against a white wall using a bare flash for harsh, direct lighting. The reason I have selected Richardson is that his style breaks the rules in photography. Instead of working with traditional soft lighting, he rebels and explores with harsh lighting which is simple to recreate, yet offers something different and recognisable. His work is often criticised as ‘low tech’ which is a contrast to Diodato’ technical excellence, yet the two photographers both places weight on subject matter and prioritise capturing an intimate collection which goes beyond aesthetic value. By using these two photographers for inspiration and direction I hope to capture a collection of images which consider the technicality rules within photographer and bends them slightly. Resulting in captivating images which find the balance between technicality and creative freedom.
RICHARDSON PHOTOGRAPHY
BILL DIODATO & TERRY RIC Camera
Setting
Demonstration
For this shoot I will be shooting on manual. This will enable me to make any necessary adjustments as I shoot to ensuring the most creative freedom and experimentation takes place. Personally I always like to start shooting at 1/160 shutter speed and increasing 1/200 when subject shows more movement. The IOS will be set too 100 and increasing up to 125 if required, with the aperture set at 2.8. I will be shooting with a Cannon 5D (ii) and alternating between two lenses, EF 24-700mm and EF 100-400mm.
BILL
DIODATO.
Unlike Richardsons lighting, Diodato was much more technical and had more rules tailored to his imagery. This made his style harder to adapt visually as it was less consistent as Richardsons. However, all his images consisted of prestige quality and focal point. Therefore his style will be adapted by ensuring I aim to capture the images with thoughtful consideration taken into the details and quality of imagery. I achieved this by slowly capturing my images to ensure the focal point was exactly where I was aiming. And directed my model to only moveevery 7 seconds to give general shooting direction and make sure the images we’re as defined as they possibly could be.
CHARDSON PHOTOGRAPHY For the model shots I again used a plain white backdrop so the images fit well with the UO existing website content and Instagram. A white back drop also gives the images a contemporary and modern feel, keeping them fresh and adding definition to the subject. In terms of lighting, I felt I could create more experimental shots through the use of constant light sources, oppose to the use of traditional trigger lighting. This enabled and encouraged me to experiment more freely with the positioning of myself, the light sources and gave the model more freedom to move. This at times became challenging due to shadows, but also worked in favour for Terry Richardson’s style. Whilst shooting I used black boards at either side of the set to provide a point for light absorption to reduce the briskness of the images and introduce depth of shadow, resulting in a more defined 3D feel and adding texture.
TERRY
RICHARDSON
After experimenting and researching It was discovered that the key to achieving this look was to keep the lighting as close to the lenses axis as possible to impact the shadow offset and create a brisk yet defined image. To make this easier when shooting I opted to use both flash on the camera and also used a trigger flash to create extra brightness when shooting.
BEFORE
Whilst shooting in Diodato’ style, I used soft lighting to ensure minimal shadows on the subjects face like seen his work, enhancing the overall smoothness of the subject face and the appearance of the makeup. This can be achieved through the use of a ring light, to balance the tones and ensure it’s captured as natural as possible. Whilst shooting the subject often moved around the set, this sometimes became problematic for the consistency of the lighting due to using non triggered sources. For example, the ring-light had to be adjusted every time the model repositioned in order to maintain the desired look. This became very time consuming where I executed the decision to focus less on creating the perfect
imagery at first hand, and use my critical thinking and knowledge of Photoshop to understand how the image can be later on adjusted. After reviewing the images, I found that they could be easily adjusted to create a consistent briskness and control shadows simply by slightly adjusting the brightness, contrast and offset. Through this process, I was then able to focus more thoroughly on my focal point, oppose to lighting. Above demonstrates the use of the ring-light coming in from the right-hand side of the set to create a dewy glow over the model and her positioning. The use of angled lighting was effective as it added texture to the makeup, and highlighted the cheekbone adding definition as seen in BDs work.
AFTER
When reviewing the imagery, I cropped the image to remove the distraction of the clothing, something of which we see in BDs photography. This crop resulted in a much calmer atmosphere within the frame of the image and keeps the focus on the subject and her beautY. In addition, I adjusted the temperature and reduced the tones within the image. The original image is overly saturated and the super soft lighting has intensified the orange tones within the frame. However, although I find this works well with the models’ skin tone, it does not compliment her eyes or green tones within her eye make up as well. To correct this, I adjusted
the colours through Photoshop to introduce more blues’. This was effective at deepening and cooling the tones in the backdrop of the image, making them more white and likewise to Richardson’s work whilst also tailoring the overall brightness to suit Diodatos style too. I also used the blemish removal tool and slightly airbrushed the models’ skin to give her a more overall glow and professional touch to the image. I feel that this image is overall very successful as the subject evokes a very effortless feel similar to the UO customer..
BEFORE
For the second part of the shoot, I completely changed the production set up, by focusing more on fashion styling and less on the technicality of the photography. This new wave of creative direction inspired by Terry Richardson (TR) I feel was very successful as it introduced more distinct elements into the collection such as more poses and more defined imagery. By introducing TRs style completely rearranged the lighting element of the shoot, I was almost able to ignore the importance of achieving a soft glow for the makeup as I was before and experiment with the harsh briskness of flash. This was exciting for me as I very rarely shoot commercial content, and when I do I find it to be quite lim-
iting and repetitive. However, TRs style offered a sense of creative freedom and allowed both me and the subject to bend the rules of traditional commercial imagery. This provided a great opportunity to practise with flash and explore with the use of shadows, something of which is not usually encouraged within the traditional studio setups. The freedom within this sense of Photography and art direction worked really well, as the outcomes were more consistent and added a new creative flair to the collection and the images evoked a sense of realism, oppose to perfection as found in the previous production. The simplified photographic processes meant that I could focus more on poses and the styling of the looks
AFTER
The styling for this imagery reflects the UO customer, young and effortless. Likewise, to the makeup collection, it was styled according to SS19 trend predictions, the trend colourful tailoring. This tailored two-piece represents the UO customer as it is stylish but suitable for everyday wear with a fun and cool finish. Paired with Nike Air Max 95s the cool kids’ sneaker of the century, hoop earrings for that extra edge and finished with a simple statement black cross body bag to wrap it up. When shooting it was important to pay attention to the details of the garments and encourage the model to wear the clothes through different positions and poses, in order to also adopt Richardson ‘intrusive’ but intimate imagery style. For the
post-production elements, this style required much less editing and mainly consisted of skin retouching and slight airbrush. One challenge I did face with this lighting was how much more definition it added to features such as her hair which were difficult to soften in Photoshop. However, this also contributed to the overall natural finish of the image likewise to TR. I brightened the images in addition to increase contrast levels. This gave the skin a soft glow and highlighted the models’ makeup. In order to maintain the shadow created whilst shooting, I had to be careful not too overly enhance the image and keep shadow levels down. Finally, I adjusted the temperature of the image slightly, to give the images a cooler, fresh and icy effect.