Developing practical skills by working on industry projects.
We set a challenge…. can you organise an event for one of London’s top museums? We took a current exhibition and asked a group of students how they would organise an event to support it. What would you feature? How would you attract people like yourself to come to the museum? How would you pitch your idea? Our members learnt what it was like to work on a live brief for a top London attraction, how to build their confidence and be able to articulate and deliver a concept. We discussed the different considerations that would have to be made to organise an event and importantly what it would need to include for visitors to have the best possible experience.
Fashion Business & Retail
The history of retail and types of different retail environments which exist is fascinating in itself. Concept stores, pop ups, concessions and even shop in shops. My favourite aspect of this topic is looking at the history of the department store, specifically Harding, Howell and Co. which opened in Pall Mall in London in 1796. The crystal palace which contributed to the concept of window shopping as early as 1851 and of course the history and theatre of Selfridges. Most of all, I would have loved to have seen the Big Biba store in the 1960’s, a shop like no other due to its interiors and unique features.
Circuits of Fashion
How can we look at an everyday fashion object in different ways? Through fashion history and culture we can take an everyday fashion item such as the T-shirt or a a pair of trainers and consider it within a ‘circuit of fashion’. I have chosen the Nike Air Max 90 as an iconic trainer and explored it from design and manufacture to marketing and consumption. Not only did this enable me to consider the history of design and its development across a number of different countries but how design, promotion, retailing and hype can transform functional footwear to an object of social and cultural significance.
Visual Merchandising: Business, Creativity, Science.
Visual Merchandising. Business, Creativity, Science.
Visual Merchandising is still a mystery to some, but every window display you see and the environment of each shop you enter is all down to visual merchandising. I have long taught that it is a combination of business, creativity and science.