By Raadhika Khetarpal-Siddhali Doshi-Geetanshi Arora-Shivani Gupta
Acknowledgement We would like to acknowledge the support from our respected professor’s Ms. Asmita Aggarwal, Ms. Milly Singh, Mr. Anuj Lall, Mr. Rohit Dhingra and Ms. Meha Jayaswal, who guided us throughout our semester for this Project. Without their knowledge and motivation we wouldn’t have come up with this Report. We are very thankful to our faculty and friends who helped us in completing a magazine and all the designers who gave interviews and answered us very patiently.
Magazine Neo Cut is a quarterly, pure fashion magazine which caters to the need of fashion student’s and aspiring fashion professionals. The magazine talks about all the things fashion, from latest trends, designer interviews, upcoming events and news to Bollywood styling. It can be termed as ‘India’s only pure fashion magazine’ as it does not cater to anything but fashion. Neo Cut will be launching its first ever issue on 30th April. Our cover lady, designer Namrata Joshipura celebrates her successful grand finales for both Lakme Fashion Week and Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week. Even with the logo of the magazine being bold and edgy, nothing is over the top for Neo Cut. The magazine follows minimalistic layouts and conveys through proper visuals and text. A well-crafted magazine is a result of careful and consistent planning. Over a course of 4 months, we executed the entire magazine right from deciding the contents to photographing editorial shoots. In the month of January, when the brief of the magazine was given, after a lot of brainstorming, a continual stream of fresh and significant ideas came up.
THEME AND TARGET: So, the first step of getting started with the magazine was determining the theme and the target audience. In order to fill the need gap of a pure fashion magazine for the young generation, we decided to target a highly specific audience. The primary target audiences of our magazine are fashion students and young aspiring professionals. The secondary target audience is students and young professionals from various fields who want to keep themselves updated with fashion. Deciding the theme for the magazine was very much inspired by the fashion magazine RTW. This magazine talks about serious fashion and covers fashion shows happening all around the globe, fashion forecast and trends. It is the ultimate guide for all fashion seniors and designers. Having gone through this magazine, we realized that there is no magazine that talks only fashion for the younger fashionistas. Being too young to understand the fashion that RTW covers, they need something that is easy and fun for them to read.
Keeping in mind that the magazine is pure fashion, we wanted to convey mostly through proper texts and visuals just like RTW. Also, the name of our magazine, Neo Cut clearly conveys modernism. In today’s day, modern is perceived as minimalism. Hence, we decided to opt for a minimalistic layout. COMPETITION: The competitors for Neo Cut are fashion magazines like Vogue, Elle and RTW. However unlike Vogue and Elle, our magazine talks purely fashion. It does not cover topics like travel, lifestyle, food and music, unlike most other fashion magazine. SET THE NAME: Once the topic was decided, the name of the magazine had to be decided. The initial process started with coming up with various words related to fashion and their synonyms. After a lot of brainstorming and research we came up with words like Gild and Glitter, Bias Cut, Bespoke, Mod cut and Baroque. In due process, we went and discussed with our typography faculty along with our styling professor. Having a clear mind of wanting to keep the magazine minimal, we went ahead with our further discussions. Having an experience of the fashion industry, our styling faculty guided us well and asked us to have a look at few magazines and blogs. Magazines like Dazed and Confused, Nylon and Kinfolk were of the same concept of what we had thought of. After referring to these magazines, we four group mates with a mutual decision reached a point of keeping the name ‘The Cut’. In the second mentor meeting, we explained the concept of keeping the word cut as it denotes fashion. The faculty later suggested us to play a little more with the word ‘The Cut’. With thoughtful nights, one of our group mates came up with the idea of adding ‘ Neo’ since it signifies modern. Settling on this, we came up with the name ‘Neo Cut’. HOW WAS THE LOGO DEVELOPED? To develop the logo we went through a complete process and tries combinations of a lot of fonts and their sizes. CONTENTS: While we were working on finalizing the name, we were side by side understanding and learning about writing feature articles, cover stories and the art of taking an interview. Understanding basic things like the language used and the behavioral pattern, we started from scratch. Soon after studying these points we started developing our rough content list. The first rough draft we made with ideas of having covered the latest Autumn/Winter collection as well as covering the 2014 collection. But keeping in mind that our magazine is a quarterly magazine, we had to think of longevity. We could not have A/W while the current season is summer. Through a lot of reference and guidance, we reedited and sat upon the content list.
One by one we kept filtering and finalize our content list. The magazine Klick played a major role in understanding what we wanted to have and how. Having a clear image of the magazine and its feel, we started working upon the magazine launch. Understanding that it’s a print magazine, we discovered that a newspaper or any print media forum would not talk or publish anything regarding a new magazine launch, since it would be one of the competitors. Hence, the only potential people on the guest list would be bloggers, television and radio media people. First List:
Fashion event – news/designer expansion Interview Style facts(Body type) Must haves Feature : accessories Editorial shoot Trend Report(ss 14/trend carried forward) Cover Story: fashion and art Street Style Bollywood Styling Fashion Update- International Trend Report WIFW: runway coverage Makeup and Hair Accessories.
Second List:
Trend setter: the idea of having trend setter was to point out and talk about the talent and proper styling of each movie in Bollywood. We all know stylists are kept for each movie …but talking about how authentic it was, how it defines the role, the character, is very rare to see in a magazine. Feature story: Initially the plan was to work upon fashion and art as a feature story. With the help of Asmita ma’am, who is our journalism faculty referred us and gave us a lot of contact numbers of Artists. We also thought about the various collaborations and inspirations such as YSL, Geometry artists. Fashion Show: under this category we thought of covering the WIFW, for A/W. But later we thought and discussed that since the magazine is covering spring and is coming in the summer season we should not be talking about the A/W collection.
Fashion Trends: The idea is to cover Hair and Makeup, Silhouettes, colour, Trends-Micro and celeb trends. Designer Interview: a magazine is incomplete without having a designer take on various angles. For which we were dependent on the WIFW. Must Haves: Designer suggestions on what should be seen the coming season Fashion Updates; Style facts(shapes); Street Style; Fashion Forecast Inspiration Traveller: For the inspiration we thought of Sapna as a model who started on an online portal. Do it yourself: is a column we thought of keeping since it’s the most trending topic and something that everyone likes.
With few changes here and there we changed few points such as under the topic trend report we thought of breaking it down to eras, colours, countries, silhouettes. Under Fashion updates we thought of keeping Designer collaborations, events. Names as Rahul Misra who is going to Milan, Wendell – collaborating with Bombay Dying, Masaba for Satya Paul working with Raza sahab for her collection, etc were few ideas we had in mind to work upon. We also thought of what all we needed to add and it resulted to have What’s Buzzing column and Street style. The final edited list for the magazine came up with the following categories:
Fashion News: covering national and international news related to fashion and various upcoming events. Style facts: For the first Issue we thought of having Body types and helping people understand what to have to dress well and look the best according to the various body type. Must have’s: Covers what designer had to say to have in your bags as the correct garment, loo k and makeup. The tribal way: the initial plan was to talk about the jewelry and the demand increasing but we later after research had to change the angle and come up with the concept revolving around tribal jewelry inspired by banjaras. Editorial Shoot: you will have a look and get a feel of how styling can be contemporizing accessories through heavy. Trend report: Helps you know what to be wearing and the trends that would be a part of the coming season. Fashion and art: This topic covers two angles one that talks about international art and fashion inspiration and the other angle is why Indian designers never do something of the similar concept for India or for the Indian market. Rina Dhaka: When spoke to Rina Dhaka before her show started she explained to us that this collection for her was not only about Nokia but her inspiration to her collection was an Dutch artist whose sense of style and fashion according to her is like a Rock star.
Street Style: covers the various experiments people try to be dresse d the best, Food over Fashion : Anand Bhuhan talks about how he can think about food over fashion( young designers take on fashion ) Anupama Dayal: Covering a established designers take on fashion Bollywood Styling: A complete take on movies and their styling Cover story: With a lot of changes and discussions we finalized on the designer Namrata Joshipura as she this year makes it big as she does grand finale for both Lakme fashion Week and Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week. Unplanned Journey: is a live example and a guideline for aspiring event designers. Designer Expansion Hair and Makeup Guideline.
Styling Documentation Once the contents had been decided and the headmast finalized, it was time to start working on the editorial shoot. The editorial shoot for the magazine was supposed to be an 8 page shoot. We had to start right from the basics: from selecting a theme, to sourcing, styling, deciding the location to photography.
Research- A lot of brain storming went into deciding a theme for the shoot. Initially we thought about a few basics like punk fashion, fall trends and japan inspired looks.
A few more ideas kept coming up in the course of time. After almost two weeks of brainstorming on themes, there were a few themes we were convinced with. One of these themes was showing the various personalities of women through the use of headgears. As the issue was coming out in the month of summers, headgears like caps and hats were totally in. Even headgears had been a major trend on ramp for a couple of seasons. Another idea that we wanted to implement was showcasing of Spring Summer fashion through ballet. Just a week back, we had come across a few images telling the story of Romeo and Juliet through ballet. This influenced us so much that we wanted to implement it in our editorial shoot. After discussing these two themes with our friends and faculty, we all agreed upon the theme of ballet showcasing the recent trends. Just when we were about to take this idea into action, the fashion styling student, P ranav Sood, showed a few of the images that really inspired us. The images that he showed us were of an accessory shoot inspired by Banjara. We were so taken aback by the images and the jewellery used that we just decided to take this up as our theme. What started as a random discussion ended up being an important guiding direction for us.
Referencing- That very day, we researched thoroughly on the topic of Banjara. Their origin, styling, lifestyle and also looked through various other shoots done on this theme. We came up with quite many reference images to guide us with the shoot.
We then approached our fashion styling professor, Anuj Lall. As soon as we discussed our theme with him and showed him the reference images, he immediately agreed on the theme. A fter a brief discussion with him, we were pretty much sorted in our minds with how the shoot will come out. He gave us a few tips and showed a few reference images he had, making the theme much clearer to us.
Sourcing- Now that the theme had been decided, the most important part came up, the sourcing of clothes and accessories. As our main theme was Banjara inspired accessories, we knew the only place where would be able to find all the accessories was Pahar Ganj.
We needed eight looks for the shoot. From all the reference images we had, we settled on a few looks and made a list of all the accessories we would have to source. So we started with the sourcing process from Pahar Ganj. We picked a few neckpieces, nose rings, anklets and earrings from there. We also sourced a few accessory pieces from our friends and family. Once we had sourced all the accessories, we brought them all together, and picked out the accessories which we thought were the most interesting. We took help from our styling professor and finalized the accessories. Once the accessories were done, we came down to the clothing. Initially we decided to only work with black. Black outfits like peplum tops, skirts and kurtis. However on discussion with the faculty, we came to realize that white would be a better option. It will make the accessories stand out and also make the shoot livelier. Also it been the summer season, white made more sense.
Run-through- All of us sourced all the interesting white garments we had. Once we had enough outfits, we had a run through with Anuj sir. All the garments were spread out on a table with suitable accessory styling done. From around the twelve looks we had sourced we decided on eight looks. While the styling was in process, we realized that along with whites we also had quite many tribal prints. There were tribal printed skirts, tops, and shorts in our collection. On having a complete look at our styling, we realized that the shoot would look more fascinating if our theme was tribal and colors.
Hence, we then went onto sourcing more bright accessories and tribal printed garments. However, we decided to stick with white, pairing tribal prints with it. On having a second run through we were finally ready for the shoot. We decided to do an indoor shoot as the lighting would help us add some drama to the shoot. The makeup and hairstyles were also decided after having a brief discussion with the makeup artist.
Shoot- We then fixed a date with the model and makeup artist. As we already had a detailed run through, the styling during the shoot went smoothly. The garments used for the shoot were
printed denim shirt, corset, skirts, jackets and shorts with tribal prints, jumpsuit and a few white tops. A lot of experimentation was done with accessories. Waist belts were used as neckpieces, neckpieces as bracelets, payal and rings as maang tikka and so on.
Overall, the editorial shoot was a great learning experience. We learnt the basics of styling and how it is done for an editorial shoot. Event Documentation The magazine being for fashion students and aspiring fashion professionals, it is important to host the event in a place which is a Fashion ‘Hotspot’. Hyatt Hotel being a place where constantly fashion events and shows keep happening seemed like a good place to host the magazine launch. Our magazine launch will be a daytime affair, with high tees and snacks served to the guests. Majority of the target audience follows fashion blogs and television news to be updated to the fashion world, hence the invitees for the magazine launch will be fashion bloggers and digital media people. As these people will be the major target audience, the event has to be very informative as well as glamorous. The feel of the magazine must come out through the set up. Fashion magazines would not be a part of this launch as they would not cover a competitor. The launch will start with the publisher and editors speeches. They will give a brief about the magazine. This will be followed by NamrataJoshipura, our cover lady, launching the magazine officially. KanganaRanaut will also be present . After the basics been decided, we went onto little depth of how the set up for the magazine launch will be. We sat with our events professor to discuss this concept in depth After a long discussion, w e reached to a conclusion of keeping the setup simple. As it would be held in one of the fashion hotels and a limited no.of guests will be invited, nothing should be over the top. A stage with a podium will be set up. We decided to add a little drama to the launch, our chief guests Kangana and Namrata will enter in a round rotating trolley and will promote the magazine. As we have to also make a set up in class, we decided to set up carton boxes with accessories on them to give a fashion feel. Along with the Events professor guidance we also went ahead by draping the various pages of our magazine’s feel on the dummy. As the launch of a magazine is a celebration so we decided to have a cake with the magazine’s cover page on it. Overall, the magazine launch helped us to learn a lot. We now know how to organize an event like this.
Event Flow
2:00 to 2:30- Registration and welcoming of guests and media. The list of 50-60 people are handed over the media kit, while they sit. 2.30- 3.15pm – the show starts with a complete interactive session with a publisher and the editor of the magazine. The event witness only bloggers and television media people and fashion lovers since a newspaper and a competition magazine would not talk or write about a new launch of a magazine. 3.15- 3.45pm- After a session with both the editor and the publisher the launch observes two glam factors in the show as designer Namrata Joshipura & actress Kangana Ranaut enters the stage from behind a revolving podium. Both the guests will give their best wishes to the magazine and promote it. Kangana Ranaut will express her thoughts on how she wished to be the face of the magazine as the magazine talks about movie styling. 3.45- 4.15pm- Both the guests will be further served snacks with drinks as a post lunch plan.
Material Board
Flowers Mannequins Wooden Podium Led lights Carton boxes Fabric – chiffons and satins Round trolley Standee Vinyl Backdrop flex LCD screen Fashion accessories
Checklist
Sound Check Permissions from authorities of hotel MC Camera team
Lights Flooring Florists Beverages and drinks Caterers Podium Seat labels Backdrop Projection Standee Seats Branding
Thank You