My Personal Critical Reflection
During the first section of the project I assisted the Fashion and Textiles students with initial ideas, mood boards and research into the brand Burberry. I looked at collections that were relevant to our initial ideas regarding animal print and graffiti such as ‘Trench Kisses’ and ‘Time’. As our ideas evolved into looking at soft corsetry and 80’s sportswear, I helped maintain our collaborative blog by writing relevant posts and captions. I also attended scheduled meetings to ensure I was involved in the design process, aware of changes and ready for the hand over to Fashion Communication.
When the collection was finalised by the fashion and textiles students, I knew we had a strong concept using British birds as this tied perfectly to Burberry’s classic use of the British aesthetic and allowed us to appeal to a wider audience through each bird’s characteristics. I then went on to develop personas for each bird, such as the pigeon who was idealised as a city chic woman who lived a busy urban lifestyle, whilst the kingfisher was a highly athletic and sporty woman.
We decided that due to the garments not being made physically a show in a box would be more pragmatic and engaging than a look-book. We wanted the show in a box to contain a wide range of items relevant to the collection such as a brochure highlighting each persona and the collection’s aesthetic, feathers, photography and specially designed packaging. Our group split the responsibilities by looking at our individual key strengths and I therefore undertook the tasks of completing all the written content and illustration to go in our brochure and show in a box.
I created illustrations that I then used to design stickers and packaging for the box to ensure that it was suited to Burberry’s high luxury branding and presentation, as well as to be used in the brochure. I wanted to design a pattern for each specific bird in case we created a separate box for each persona, and I ensured I created enough stickers for each one. I knew that my written content would have to help the customer understand the bird personas and so I wrote pieces that were all of a similar style but described a vastly different group of people to demonstrate how there is something for everyone in the collection. I also wanted my written content to place the personas in real life settings so that they could be relatable to the reader and much more personal, this helps the reader to align themselves with them and make the garments of the collection have a real life setting and purpose.
Finally, I ensured I completed research into the costing of the components such as the stickers, tissue paper and sourcing feathers to get an understanding of how economically effective the boxes would be and whether we would have to decide on different price points for each persona. I also completed brand research into Burberry’s ethics and code of conduct towards using down and how they source their components.
