Goldwell goes Viral!

The Goldwell Video "Fashion of Colour" has now gone viral on YouTube. My team's video is "Gender Liberation". The results are fantastic  - especially the visual representation of gender entanglement using the models hair.

Final Tutorial for FMP

Today I had my final tutorial with Emmanuelle prior to the hand in of my dissertation on the dreaded Friday 13th :S

Luckily I feel that I have managed my time well and although I still have some editing in places and some areas of each case study to finish, I feel confident that this can all be done in time!

A few aims for my dissertation now are to cut out the emotive chatty language i.e the opposite of here :)... I am also going to research The Messel dress collection in detail as Emmanuelle thinks this would be a great exhibition to include in Case study Two with regards to clothing that is passed down within families. The women of the Messel family kept their dresses beautifully preserved and there are examples from six generations within the family. One that I am analysing in further detail is the wedding dress (above) that was worn by Anne Messel in 1925, yet remains in perfect condition today - apart from a lipstick stain which luckily for the benefit of my dissertation tells a great narrative!

Threads of Feeling -

Today I visited the Foundling Museum near Russel Square in order to research a potential case study for my dissertation. It is a museum that exhibits the history of the Foundling Hospital and the tragic stories of pverty stricken parents who had to give up their babies in the 17th century. Being someone who considers themself somewhat of an 'emotional retard' and often, i've been told, not being able to see the serious side of things, I consider today a new day. It is impossible to think of words that could have so clearly and visually described the love between a mother and child as this exhibition. That love not during their childhood, but at the point that mothers had to make the painstaking decision to give up their tiny babies. Before I even entered the museum I had seen images and read text of the heart renching stories of the foundling babies. Even I felt myself well up at the thought of how they coped with this separation, given that once left the infant mortality rate was as high as knowing that two thirds of the babies would die.

Having discussed possible options with Emmanuelle it was suggested that the story of The Foundling  Babies may be very fitting to my subject. To re-cap I am discussing the links between clothing and relationships in families. I am focusing on anthropological theories of the gift, and what makes heirlooms and items of clothing more than just a piece of cloth to an individual. The Foundling Story is a heartfelt and moving one. I gained a great insight into the tragedy that many families faced in the 17th Century when poverty forced them to give up their children. The only 'token' left with the anonymous child that linked them back to their parents was often a piece of fabric or an item of clothing. The foundling museum has hosted a temporary exhibition displaying many of the tokens since October, and luckily I got to see this collection just three days before it closed! See the website here for more information.

Two examples of the fabric tokens, notice the embroidered flower indicating the chance of a new life, and the hearts showing the universal symbol of love. Mothers would clearly try to make their fabric as identifiable as possible, in the small hope that one day, if they were in a position to re-claim their child, that they would know which one belonged to them.

Getting published!

After a very successful presentation at the Goldwell HQ in Green Park, the editor of Creative Head magazine said she would like to publish all the work in an upcoming issue of the magazine. This is course is great news for everyone involved as it means all the hard work will now be published and out there to see!

It was not just the images but also the short films we made that were shown at the Goldwell presentation. I was not too impressed as I had been chosen, (by mass majority, mob mentality and peer pressure infront of tutors!)  to speak on the film. No one likes to see themselves on camera, especially not me. Ground swallow me up, and although I know the clip is a viral, theres a part of me that would just like the images (and not the film) to be seen by greater numbers! Afterall, I chose to work behind the camera in this industry and definately not infront of it!