What Is FCP?

Fashion Communication and Promotion is a fairly new type of course. Fashion courses are no longer limited to just designing the clothes. The rise of interest in fashion as a career has sparked universities to create courses catered to those interested in other aspects of the industry such as marketing, advertising and PR. I view my course as being heavily focused around marketing and advertising, while always considering visual aspects, so bringing in a little bit of graphic design too.

For those who are interested in studying this course, or perhaps just want to understand the subject a little bit more (mum and dad, I'm looking at you!), I've put together a little post explaining some of the work we do on the course. 

1. Trend Report

This is the first report I handed in. You'll find more about this project in some of my previous blog posts, but in a nut shell, we were given an area of fashion to focus on, our being mens outerwear, and from this we chose a specific trend and created a report about this trend. I chose to focus on shearling. The first part of the report focuses on this trend in advertising. We were asked to look at how brands portray the trend. Do they target it at a young or older consumer? Do they make it look luxurious or edgy? Why did they choose to photograph it in that location? These are all questions we had to ask in order to understand why certain choices are made, so that when we come to create our own ads, we understand what we are trying to communicate.

I then went on to look at the history of shearling. From its uses in film and TV, to its historical origins. Understanding where shearling originated helped me to understand its journey to how we wear it today.

2. The Fragrance Project

I'm currently still working on this project, however these are a few shots from a report I created about our initial ideas for a fragrance brand. The fragrance project is made up of four tasks; generating ideas as a group, analysing these ideas in an individual report, choosing your idea and presenting the brand to the course - along with a logo, print ad, video ad and packaging, and finally, another individual report discussing your ideas for promoting this brand for the next year. All our reports have to be presented visually, which can incur quite hefty printing costs, but it's very satisfying seeing your work printed professionally. I personally love designing the layouts for our reports!

3. Presentations

Presentations are a big part of this course, which can sound a little daunting. Talking to a large group of people is my worst nightmare, but the course gradually leads you in to this; you always present as a group and you start off presenting to small audiences. This is such a great skill to have and I'm thankful the course has pushed me to do them. 

This particular presentation was part of our fragrance project. We had to present our chosen idea for a fragrance brand back to the course and lecturers. There is a heavy focus around understanding our consumer on the course; every decision we make has to be backed up by research. Why will our branding appeal to our consumer? Where will our consumer see our advertising? What is going to make them want to buy our product? In can get a little tedious, but it's a skill we'll practice every day in the real world.

The course has a great mix of visual and creative aspects, as well as learning about the more serious marketing side of fashion. If you have any more questions about the course, then feel free to email me! 

Aderyn x

A Week With No Phone

Last Friday my amazing friends from home took a trip from their uni towns to come and visit me in Nottingham. Of course this meant a big night out. While we were all busy dancing the night away and pretending we were a sassy girl band, a snoopy pair of hands slipped in to my handbag and stole my phone! I’m usually very good with my phone, I never break it and I’d never lost it before so I was really surprised that this was happening to me.

Looking back, I am quite thankful it was me that had my phone taken and not one of my friends; others may not have taken the discovery of their phone being gone quite as calmly as I did. But I was there to have a good night with my favourite people, and there was nothing I could do about my phone, so I continued with the evening as normal. As soon as I got home I logged on to my laptop and opened up ‘Find My iPhone’. Offline. Great. There was no hope of me getting this phone back. I didn’t get paid till the following Thursday so wouldn’t be getting a new phone till then. I accepted my fate of a phoneless week. Here’s how it went.

Saturday:

I didn’t really notice not having my phone with my friends being round, as I hardly would’ve used it anyways. There was too much catching up to be done. It did hit me when we headed to a Nottingham Fashion Week event and I had the sudden urge to Snapchat/Instagram my surroundings. It made me question why we feel the need so bad to let every one on our contacts list know what we’re up to.

Sunday:

My friends had gone home and I faced a twenty minute walk back to my flat from the train station without a phone. It didn’t dawn on me until then how much I needlessly have my phone in my hand. What’s wrong with walking around town with your eyes focused on what’s in front of you? Why did I feel the need to scroll Facebook as I made my journey home?

With lectures awaiting me the next morning, I realised a crucial role of my phone. The alarm app. How was I going to wake up? Thankfully I have an amazing flatmate who, being on my course, has a very similar schedule to me, and agreed to wake me up every morning. Babe.

Monday:

Telling the time. Another crucial role. I headed to Primark and picked up a cheap watch, otherwise I would not have made any of my seminars or meetings that week. Organising specific meet up times and places became very important, because as soon as I left my room, I had no form of communication with anyone until I actually saw them face to face.

Tuesday:

By this point I was becoming quite used to not having a phone. There were still things which were a little odd, like not being able to text my best friend a funny story right away, or not being able to google my spontaneous burning questions, but overall it really wasn’t that bad.

Wednesday:

Knowing I would get paid tomorrow, I went online to see about ordering a new phone. It turned out my upgrade was due in October and I only had £180 left to pay on my device. It wasn’t ideal that I had to fork out this much money, but it was far cheaper than purchasing a brand new iPhone.

Thursday:

The day had come! Off I strutted to the O2 store, confident that I would be walking away with a new phone. It turned out I had some kind of block on my phone and it would take 24 hours to lift. I'd gone almost a week, I could wait another day.

Friday:
At this point I was so ready to have a phone back in my life. I had a number of phone calls I needed to make and it was becoming quite the inconvenience. Just my luck though, the block hadn't been lifted. In fact, they claimed no one even tried to lift the block in the first place. Another promise of 24 hours, and another disappointing walk home.

Saturday:
I wasn't all that hopeful that I'd be walking home with a new phone in my hands today. And rightly so. I went in to the store and they told me again that they couldn't upgrade me because of the block on my phone. I stomped home, very frustrated, and somehow stumbled across another O2 store that was much closer to my flat than the one I'd been trekking to every day! I thought I'd chance it and see if the staff were any more helpful in this store. 

Within half an hour I had a new iPhone 6 in my hands! While being frustrated that I'd been walking past this store everyday without realising, and had I gone to this one in the first place I could have had a phone days earlier, I was elated that I had a phone back in my life.

One of the things that I had missed the most about not having a phone was Snapchat. Somehow posting 3 second clips of my daily life, and viewing the snippets of 30 other people, was an integral part of my routine. It dawned on me that we're all a little too obsessed with making our lives appear appealing to people we hardly know, and far too concerned about what everyone else is up to. It was quite nice enjoying my Starbucks cookie without the constant thought of having to upload my snack to social media. Needless to say I went straight back to my old habits as soon as I had a phone again. *insert selfie with dog filter*