Celine Selfridges

The main purpose for my trip to London was to conduct market and retail research on my groups chosen brand 'Celine', pre arrival in the city we discussed where we could find concessions of the brand as the flagship store was closed down by Phoebe Philo in 2004. Me and my partner Sam looked around Celine Selfridges. The Celine concession was located on the 2nd floor in the women's wear designer gallery situated near other well known high end luxury brands such as Alexander Mc Queen, Balenciaga and Dries Von Noten. 

Whilst looking around the concession we took notes of positioning and also conducted 2 separate questionnaires in order to learn more about the brand from different people, its workers and its consumers. 

Staff Questionnaire

What do you think the brand stands for?

. We know the brand has made it from how its been copied by other brands such as the Zara Studio collection

3 words you associate with Celine

. organic, pure, high quality

What does the brand promise it's consumers?

. luxury and quality

What type of person do you think it targets? Age range?

. business not afraid of wearing a mens cut

Is there a specific colour palette? 

. black, beige, grey, changes with seasons

Consumer Questionnaire

How does Celine appeal to you?

. cut of the clothes, the silhouette, the clean beautiful fabric

Where would you wear Celine?

. All the time, classic

Target age range?

. 40+

3 words you associate with Celine? 

. classic, cool, grown up

What do you think the brand stands for?

. elegant grown up, well cut, edgy

Second Module- Celine

Now that module 1 has finished, we now move on to module 2 which requires in a new group of 6 to create a 10 minute power point presentation on a brand that we ourselves select as a group. This project develops our research and analysis skills in depth, whilst expanding our experiences of team work.

Meeting 1- Wednesday 6th November

At our first group meeting 5 people were present

. Myself

. Naomi

. Ashleigh

. Sam

. Mel 

We met for approximately 30 minutes to choose our brand out of an original 6 selected for us, these brands were G-Star, Adidas, Jill Sander, Marni, Celine and COS. As a group we decided on Celine as it is a globally well known luxury brand, we then allocated research paths for each of us (past and present) and colour palettes. 

Tom Ford Final Moodboard

At the end of module 1 we were asked in groups to present a final photoshop mood board on A3, explaining our assigned brand thoroughly and stating why we had placed what we did on the mood board. My assigned brand for my mood board was Tom Ford.

The idea behind my mood board was derived from where I think Tom himself gets his inspiration from. Tom Ford stands for glamour and sexuality, the brand isn't mysterious, it is very graphic and unapologetic with an essence of aggression shown in my mood board through his 'Neroli Portofino' campaign of 2 naked people seamlessly falling down the right hand side. He creates clothes for the mature woman, pale skinned, sophisticated. The image of Julianne Moore depicts this, as a close friend of Tom Ford, she is a brand ambassador and starred in his hugely successful film 'The Single Man', a clip which is shown in the top left hand corner. He loves the mid century woman, 50's and 60's glamour brought out in his campaign for perfume 'Black Orchid' shown on the above right hand side. I have tried to base my mood board solely around this, the background showing old broadway, using pictures of New York in the 50's (The Empire State Building) and famous glamour icons such as Elizabeth Taylor and Sunny Harnett, the type of woman I believe he would dress. I have also included work from photographers Irvin Peng and Richard Avedon both who have shot for Vogue in the 50's and 60's, this inspired me and made me believe they are connected to Tom Ford as their work can be graphic very much like his campaigns. A colour palette is included to display the mood of the board while fabric examples of his work (bottom left hand corner) have been used to keep his modern day look involved. I made my mood board very cluttered and busy in order to keep in mind the graphicness of his clothes, fabric choices and  campaigns. 

Unlike the other members of my group my brand and mood board was very different, the brands in which I was asked to compare mine to had very neutral colour tones and were more soft (Chloe, Reiss, Bottega Veneta) all besides 2 sports brands (Puma, Rapha). 

FEEDBACK
After holding my mood board up to a room of people and thoroughly explaining it, my course tutors then read out their feedback on my groups performance and my mood board. The feedback said that I need to take my time more and pause for thought and have more confidence and self belief in what I am presenting. That I put forward an opinion and use a lot of contextual reference, that my mood board is creative. Tom Ford is humorous and provocative which is shown through my work by using good image selection. The problem with my mood board is that if you were to take away the name, would you really know who the brand was? Should i choose to resubmit my work I would need to make the board itself more of a minimal aesthetic in order to fully mirror his campaigns, include key words and make a few tweeks and touches. 

Tom Ford Colour Palette

After exploring into Colour Theory I expanded my research into looking into Colour Palettes more specifically for Tom Ford. On photoshop I created these colour palette variations using Tom Fords most recent campaign switching around colours, positions and shapes in order to find out what looked best.

Colour palettes are important when looking into a brand, it helps you to get a feel for what type of look the brand stands for before doing any research or looking at any garments.