Elle Newman

In the Diversity Now project we were asked to create a piece of work to submit to a competition. The competition was about diversity in the fashion industry, we had to pick a theme that we felt the fashion industry was under representing and create a piece of writing or poster campaign to represent our cause. I decided to focus on age in the fashion industry and how older women are not very often represented in the fashion industry in terms of models and campaigns. I did a lot of research into other companies that have used older models such as American Apparel, Dolce and Gabbana and the M and S leading ladies campaign. I decided to do a journalistic article as writing is one of my strongest skills, and I really felt I could evoke more of what my thoughts and feelings were on older women representation in the fashion industry then I could picture. But I did do a photo shoot with an older model aged 78, I know photography is not one of my strong points but I really enjoyed shooting her. I feel like my photos are ok but they could have been stronger if they were shot in the studio or if I had better lighting with me on the day. I also could of used different cameras instead of just a SLR, such as an analog camera. For my journalistic article I decided to focus on the phase ‘Growing old gracefully’. I’m really happy with the topic choice that I picked it was relevant to how I was thinking and feeling the time. I am really happy with the writing that I produced as I feel it really points out what is wrong with the fashion industry’s current attitude to older women and even makes use question are own opinions on older women’s roles also. Even though the writing is good, I feel like I could have produced a better layout and could of made the journalistic article look a lot more pleasing to the eye. I did use one of the photo’s that I took from my shoot to accompany the article. I added in some typography in a sixties/ seventies type style as this fitted in well with the ‘peace and love’ feel I was going for. I also added in the models name and age as I felt this was important to show as age is never normally stated in fashion campaigns. The phase I went for on the poster was ‘With age comes ageless beauty’, I really like this phase as it fits in perfectly with what my article was about and is a phase that every women should know. Over all I am quite happy with my final outcomes for this project, I didn’t really enjoy the project for some reason as I just couldn’t get connected with it enough. I found it really hard to get motivated and to create any work. If I could change anything it would be doing more research as I feel this really could of helped to motivate me and inspire me to think more and create more work.