For this Detail project, we had to select a Menswear designer whose collection had inspiration in another historical period. During our briefing we heard about Thom Browne and I instantly liked his collection and knew I wanted to pick him. The goal is pick a designer and create a lookbook with his clothes. We must be creative and think outside the box here. We saw some videos of Prada's lookbook as well. It was a video, you have the clothes and the feeling of the collection. Quite interesting, but I didn't want to do a video. It's not my strongest suit and I knew I wouldn't have enough time to get it to perfection. Something I heard during the brief made my mind about what I wanted to do from the beginning: An interactive lookbook, initially the plan was to be an App. You have access to the collection and the original idea of the designer and what he wanted to do but then, you also could play around with the clothes and create your own look with your own identity. Because sometimes we see clothes on the runaway and we like them, but it's not quite the way we would wear it or want it to be. So in this case, people would have access to that.
My main struggle was: I have NO idea how to create an App, like none at all and the project was only two weeks long, so no time at all to at least the basics. So instead, I was going to create the idea and how everything was going to look like and act the closest as possible to the real thing. I could do that.
So I started looking at his collection and how his lookbook look like. It was pretty simple and boring, in my humble opinion. So after checking that, I studied his collection and his inspirations, I saw clearly Dandy and some Victorian elements as well. Then I read the Style.com review and I learned he was inspired by an exhibition at the Met about Mourning in 20th Century. His show is all about death and funeral, actually it is a funeral. It starts with a guy walking around spaces and then he dies. After that people come to give their last goodbye. One by one they come and look and go. Snow is falling and a very sad music plays in the background. But there is beauty to it, and that's exactly what Thom Browne saw it.
So, after researching his collection I went back to my research and to the Dandies, I had quite interesting conversation with one of my tutors who argued with me that Dandies were Edwardians and not Victorians, but I later found out that there are versions for every period of time. The Victorian dandy is Beau Brummell and his Cravat. The Edwardian is more tie and white shirt, something that I thought i was closer to the collection.
During my research I came across a christmas card from Liberty's. It was the store and lights all over it. I thought that was beautiful and then I came up with the idea of creating a street in an Edwardian architecture, with lights on it so the person could click on them and go somewhere else. I got inspired by the Harry Potter website, whose idea is to be interactive and playful. Perfect combination.
So I researched online Edwardian architecture and houses and went to London to check some places and take pictures. The I finally found a house, tiny but full of details but enough to allow to crop it on Photoshop and put in sequence in a street. I did and afterwards I put a sky and the street and snow - I got inspired by the show, where they have snow falling - and the lights of the show. It's dark but you still can see 3 lights in there.
After creating the street and the beginning, the rest was to create the intro (with informations about the collection), the collection (with the images from the designer) and the create tab ( where you could create whatever look you wanted). The initial idea for the "create tab" was to have a man dressed in edwardian undergarments, but that turned out not feasible in the end and I replaced with the first image of the show and once you screw the thumbnail the image changes. Giving the person a chance to create as many outfits as she pleases.
