The project is to design a Fashion Label of any style of our choice loosely based on the concept of Red.
My original idea was to percieve red as a primary colour, a basic colour needed to make other colours. Thus my store was going to be all about taking things back to basics as I realised that Australia had a lack of stores that focused on clothes that were clean and minimal. It was too hard to find a well cut plain tshirt or a high quality affordable business shirt. The closest thing to this in Australia in my opinion is American Apparel and perhaps Country Road.
The inspiration of this original idea came from brands like Visvim and to an extent Zara.
Visvim, the grail of japanese high end streetwear focused on quality and simplicity rather than flashy luxury goods. It's clothes though highly desirable, sometimes cost more than produts of LV and Gucci.
Even though I liked this idea, I wanted to do something that was different and more outrageous, something that would make a great project and something I have not done before.
Though I can't say I am the biggest fan nor am I involved in the sub-culture, I had a particular curiosity on the recent Electro-Pop/Hiphop dominance.
Electronic music and fashion has been in our psyche since the original Doctor Who Theme (ione of the first piece of electronic music). Since then, we've seen the culture of electronic music and the fashion around it evolve and change through the ages. I however, wanted to do something that perhaps we weren't all too familar with, something people would recognize as something different and ... fun.
I looked for inspiration watching recent music video clips and looking at photography, eventually I remembered something I had seen during my exchange in Korea and related to trends that I've/We've been seeing for a long time. Electro-Pop/Hip Hop.
Enter 2NE1
The styles these girls adopted in this photo was exactly what I had in mind.
The represent a certain style movement that has prevalent in East-Asia. Their music ranged from disco/pop/hip-hop but they were all electronic. However this over the top mash up look of elements from electro/punk/hip-hop look wasn't unique to Korea or Japan or China, it has been slowly entering our consciousness within the last few years via (varying degrees) Kanye West, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Gwen Stefani etc.
Examples follow:
Pharrell William's Label "Billionare Boys Club aka. BBC"
Kanye West in a promo for a Japanese street label "A Bathing Ape aka. Bape"
The list goes on, however my main inspirations were still 2NE1 and I related the theme of Red to passion and fun and things that stand out which lead to my selection of the name "LED", currently working on a backcronym for LED.
