Darcey Thompson @criticaleyes - Tumblr Blog

Extinction Rebellion.

For my perfume group project, we based our whole story on this activist movement as we were all so blown away by messages they were putting across. We decided to call our product ‘Xtinct’ based after this movement and would donate most of the proceeds to Extinction Rebellion. I found a great definition on their Wikipedia page that sums the campaign perfectly.

‘Extinction Rebellion (abbreviated as XR) is a socio-political movement which uses nonviolent resistance to protest against climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, and the risk of human extinction and ecological collapse.’

I really support this movement and think it’s really important that people are made aware of the delicate earth. We based our project of this purely for that reason and wanted to bring awareness to as many people as possible.I already follow their Instagram page but was never aware of their website page… it is very well put together and has very impactful videos and bold visuals.

https://rebellion.earth/press/

They have 219k followers on Instagram and have defiantly made an impact on generation Z more than any other generation, they constantly have peaceful protests in London and constantly receive support form Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old girl from Sweden who is famous for a speech she made at the UN Climate Change COP24 conference calling out world leaders and telling them if I can understand why can’t you. Which I think is very powerful and moving, I will put the link below to the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFkQSGyeCWg

The government stepped up...

‘£4.7 million government fund launched to drive up the recycling of hard-to-recycle materials.’ That opening caught my attention strait the way on the ‘www.gov.uk’ website. Ever since watching the Stacey Dooley documentary on fashion and cotton being a huge concern and learning how much water is used to make one pair of jeans defiantly shocked the nation and defiantly shocked me. A wave of guilt took over me and I made a conscious decision to reign in my shopping habit and not have to buy a pair of jeans unless I desperately needed them…

That’s when I came across this article. The government are launching a scheme to boost the recycling of textiles and plastic packaging. The fact they are paying attention to this huge problem is amazing but I can’t help but think that they are a bit late to the mark? But regardless at least something is being down about it now. I will leave a link to the website so you can check it out yourselves.

They also left this statement from the Environment Minister;

‘We are committed to going further and faster to reduce, reuse, recycle and cut waste. Valuable waste ending up in landfill makes no sense environmentally or economically.’

‘We are making progress but there is more to do, and I encourage organisations to apply for our multi-million-pound grant to drive-up the recycling of these valuable materials.’

To me this is very impressive and I really do believe that people are really starting to wake up and realised this massive dilemma on our hands.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fund-opens-to-reduce-waste-from-plastic-packaging-and-textiles

The face mask trend

When researching for my summative project I wanted to look into what kind of skincare rout I was going to take and I took to social media and also research what skincare brands best sellers were. That is when I realised that the face mask is really popular and actually quite a trend…

I noticed on Instagram that a lot of girls post pictures of them in face masks and then I came across it on another social media app, snapchat. There is a snapchat filter where it places a face mask on your face and then you can take a selfie. Brands also use this to promote themselves. They take inferences with a lot of followers and either pay them or give their products for free to them in exchange for a post on Instagram wearing their face masks.

Although my consumer wouldn’t probably contribute to this trend I think it just proves that faces masks are the next up and coming skin care product and even might expand the LRS consumer if they came out with a skin care product like face masks... the LRS consumer are very much the ‘no make-up, make-up look’ they would invest in something like a face mask as they do in fact like to take care of their skin but also wouldn’t dedicate their time to apply something like face moisturiser every night.

Waitrose the ‘hero’...

Prior to my previous blog post about Waitrose using excess and unnecessary amount of plastic for vegetables and in particular with avocados, Waitrose have seemed to come up with a bring your own container scheme…

This news is amazing and I do hope it sticks and other super markets begin to take on this idea of bringing containers in rather than buying plastic packets of pasta and cereal. However, I can’t really praise Waitrose as many other people seem to be doing as they are still coating vegetables in unnecessary double plastic, when other supermarkets are already using a lot less. So, whilst there is still a huge amount of plastic being used in all of their other shops all over the country, they’ve seemed to be only doing a ‘trail’ in one London store.

I decided to take a look at their website and I also found it ironic that their website makes out that they are doing a lot to try and reduce their plastic packaging buy ‘getting rid of coffee cups’… which was already introduced and already used by a lot of other supermarket branches.

‘We’ve taken steps to eliminate unnecessary plastic - for example we no longer provide disposable coffee cups in our stores, have stopped selling packs of disposable plastic drinking straws, and have switched our plastic stem cotton buds to paper. We were also the first supermarket to stop selling products containing microbeads.

In our fruit and veg aisles we are replacing loose plastic bags with bags that can go in the home compost or be used as a food waste caddy liner. We estimate this will save 71 million plastic bags a year. We’ve also introduced a reusable bag for fruit and veg that customers can buy and of course we’ve now removed 5p single-use plastic carrier bags from all our stores.’

That was a statement on their website which I found completely contradictory as I have seen from primary observation that they are in fact using more plastic than other super markets. And equally a lot of super markets already do what they are putting forwards…

Sexualising Fruit...

I came across an artist called Stephanie Sarley. She picked up on the popularity of making fruit sexual and made a killing out of it. She has now had 3 exhibitions and has grown her Instagram following and now currently has 398,000 followers. The reason this particular artist inspired me was because my consumer profile likes a little risk and enjoys being risky and flirtatious. They like to party and do not take them self seriously.

So, I thought if I could make a ‘scent’ around fruit and bring a sexual and flirty vibe I would be hitting my consumer exactly on target. The fact they love the ‘no makeup, make up look’, which means they do take care of their skin and appearance but don’t want to give the impression of doing so, skin care would be perfect. And to make that fit in with my assigned brief ‘scent’ I would make the skin care fruity…

Sexualising fruit has been a big trend for the past couple of years. And I think this type of raunchy, unusual art fits in with the LRS consumer perfectly. Which is why for my scented face mask I want to pick fruit to be the scent.

With it being a scent brief, the only options for my scented face mask would either be a perfumed face mask, a flower-scented face mask or a fruit scented face mask. But coming across Stephanie Sarley, I have come to the conclusion that I want to pick fruit as I feel like I can really play on the fruit aspect when designing a mock-up of the product and make it fit towards the consumer.

Consumer profile; LRS

For my summative project, I need to create a consumer profile for the brand LRS. After doing some research I have come to the conclusion that the consumer for this brand I have chosen would be upper class, but have a very arty and chilled approach to life but would also go out all weekend long in some of London’s less discreet bars. The consumer profile I think that fits with LRS is the kind of person like James Callis who plays Tom from Bridget Jones Diary’s; constant smoking, constantly pissed, loves his fashion, jets of to Amsterdam nearly every month and also loves his friends and admires art and good Italian food.

They would eat at places like Sketch in London and order the risotto and a large glass of red wine. They take that ‘no makeup, makeup look’ approach to life where they want people to be under the impression that they don’t care about the way they look, but in fact put a lot of time and effort into their appearance. They would live in either Hackney or Chelsea and drive a retro car. They would visit the V&A museum or even the Saatchi art gallery in their spare time between socializing with close friends in the evening and hanging out at London bars. However, love to throw house parties and get drunk and maybe take drugs, as mentioned by Raul Solis his 2017 collection was based on a drug high. They would have a weird scene of humour and wouldn’t conform to the mainstream way of life by following latest trends or celebrity gossip.

Y/Project

When trying to find a brand that has a similar consumer to the brand you have chosen, LRS, I started to look on social media platforms. I came across the ‘Y/Project’ on Instagram and found that it is very much like LRS’s in the sense of its witty photography and daring poses. I really liked this take on fashion and not necessarily portraying your best angels.

Glenn Marten, the creative director for Y/Project, ‘Fuses the energy of the street with thought-provoking silhouettes’ which I think really compliments with LRS’s consumer as well.

Y/Project is more established than LRS and has 308,000 more followers on Instagram which indicates that they are more well known to society which makes it’s this brand great to follow as they probably have the same consumer as LRS and I can see if they have taken risks that might have not necessary worked out and can try avoiding them when it comes to LRS. However, I could also see what risks they have taken and that have paid off and could perhaps take on board that the consumer would like that certain thing. The Y/Project haven’t expanded their brand to anything more than clothes at the moment so I wouldn’t know if the shared consumer between LRS and the Y/Project would like something like a fragrance product or a skin care product but through the consumer profile I made I think there would be a strong possibility they would buy into it.

What were they thinking…

I have followed Sophia and Cinzia on YouTube for just over a year now and really enjoy watching their videos as some of them are based on clothing hauls/ makeup tutorials/ night out vlogs/ abroad trips. I just enjoy watching their life style and enjoy watching them grow as they seem so genuine and are hilarious girls.

They started their YouTube channel about 4 years ago and I think they were both approximately both 16 years old. And now they have over 200,00 subscribers. Which is amazing. They now get all sorts of sponsorships and brand deals and all paid for trips away with clothing brand, like Coachella with Motel Rocks. However, earlier this year they had announced that they were realising a new collection with a clothing brand called; Nikki Studios which is quite a pricey brand considering Sophia and Cinzia are more or less well known for PLT/Miss Guided hauls which are both fast fashion brands. However, excitement began to build for me and many other fans for the YouTuber as they revealed more and more.

Finally, the day came when they realised their collaboration… I was shocked. The clothes were so beautiful, I wanted to buy every single thing on there. However… The price. I appreciate that the clothes are amazing quality and very carefully designed but they were very expensive and personal I couldn’t afford one single piece which was a shame as I really wanted to support the girls. Many other fans expressed their disappointment and Sophia and Cinzia did touch on the subject of why they were the price they were and it did make sense but a real same as so many people, including me, are just use to fast fashion prices knower days.

LRS

LRS stems from a New York fashion designer, Raul Solis. He started LRS as a women’s wear brand and only was experimenting and says he didn’t take it too seriously. Now LRS is shown at New York fashion week, stocked by Opening Ceremony and has a total of 5 collections. He is mainly inspired by his Mexican heritage and for his 2017 collection he was inspired by ‘acid trips’.

He stated in an interview with DAZED that his inspirations stemmed from a lot of things to do with youth and the brand Maison Margiela, ‘I’m a huge Margiela geek so I’m sure it comes out of that! I’m also really inspired by youth culture, the club scene and all the crazy wild kids – they’re the ones who would wear the clothes and not think it’s occasional dressing. Art too, I look at so many things – even a gesture or the way a girl holds bag can be inspiring to me.’

The reason I picked the brand LRS for my summative was because it wasn’t quite established yet. It had a very distinctive story but I felt like it had so much more room to grow and possible would be open to using perfume based products. They have a very interesting approach to their visuals and even use their photographs and turn them upside down, which is quite unusual. They also don’t use stereotypical fashion models. They use models that are all different shapes and sizes. Some have very outgoing hair styles and some model’s hair are even bright pink and green.

Clothing haul’s...

My friend and I have made a fashion clothing haul for our youtube channel as they are very popular and thought it would be a great way to use different media types for my blog. Below is a video formatted blog called a ‘vlog’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASDNqa-mm08&t=31s

I walked out of Carluccio’s...

Recently I visited Carluccios in Leicester and had the worst experience I have ever had in a restaurant…

I have a nut allergy so I find it really hard to eat at new places as I’m unsure on how seriously they take nut allergies, so I always stick to restaurants I have been to previously. I have visited Carluccios many of times but have recently been and my mum and I thought it was a good idea to go as we have always enjoyed are experience in this restaurant and the food.

So, we we’re greeted by a lovely waitress that seated us in a lovely window spot and passed over the menus. I instantly knew what I was going to have as I always get the same thing from the set menu; tomato bruschetta and spaghetti bolognas. Then I informed out waitress of my nut allergy and she said she would check if I can have both of them.

This is when it got shocking. The lady then came back and told me that I couldn’t not have the bruschetta as the ingredients have changed and that the bread apparently included nuts. So, I asked her to show me the ingredients and it listed; hazel nut, cashew nut, brazil nut, almond nut… so I explained to the waitress that this bread could not possibly include all of these nuts and maybe that means it ‘may contain’ as that is quite a common thing. But she insisted I have either the gluten free bread of choose something different… I then asked for the bolognas and the waitress then said that also contained nuts. And asked if I would swap to the gluten free pasta… so now pasta includes nuts???? Again, I said no I will not have gluten free pasta as I don’t really like it and told her it can’t possibly contain nuts… and in the end, there was no point arguing so my mum and I got up and walked out. One, I am not changing my preferred set menu choice twice and two, that is ridiculous that their only solution is to refer to gluten free things…

My experience of the Dior exhibition…

Although nothing can take away from the breath-taking garments that belong to Dior, the experience wasn’t what I expected.

When buying a £22 ticket to see the Dior exhibition, it isn’t just going to cost £22… it will cost a lot more for many people that perhaps live outside London. I live about 3 hours away from London and to make it worth my while it would consist a whole day spent there which included train fair £60, breakfast, lunch or dinner or all three, and also the tube fairs or taxi to travel from one stop to the next. So, a lot of time and money is put into a day just to see one exhibition, but I think total worth it.

When arriving to the Victoria and Albert museum I was just blown away with how beautiful it was. We arrived at the Dior part of the museum exactly on our allocated time. When we entered it was very impressive. However, it quickly came to my mum and I’s attention that it started to become very cramped and very full very quickly.

Making our way through the exhibition was unpleasant. I could barely see anything and if I wanted to get to the front of anything I would have to rudely push which I wasn’t comfortable doing. There were about 1o minute ques just to enter the next room but these were ques because you could just not physically fit any more people into one space.

When leaving the exhibition, I took a comments postcard and filled it out expressing my upset and how poorly manged and oversubscribed it was and posted it in their post box.

Corolle Line

When I first heard that there was going to be a Dior exhibition I instantly told my mum we have to go. We then booked the tickets that were dramatically dropping in number as we spoke, and booked our trains to London.

Now, I absolutely love Dior and there is one special piece that really speaks to me and I was dying to see it in the flesh. It was a piece from the Spring/Summer 1947 Haute Couture collection ‘Corolle Line’. Not only does this wonderful garment outstand me, the famous picture it features in blows me away even more.

When I first came across this beautiful garment I actually found it in the photography taken by Willy Maywald. And I love Willy Maywald, he is one of my favourite fashion portrait photographers ever to have existed. And so, when I came across this photography I loved it for many reasons. I am also a huge nerd for black and white photography as I think it is so classic and timeless, well not timeless in the fact it can look dated but in the sense of it always being bold and powerful and also intriguing and often leads down to imagination of what colours where perhaps involved.

When entering the Dior exhibition, I was astounded that this was the first piece to come across. I stood staring at it for a good 10 minutes until my mum got bored. At least now that is one less thing on my bucket list to tick off.

Episode one of GOT

Okay so let’s talk about Game of Thrones… not only did I watch the entire box set again to make sure I was caught up, but I also spent hours watching YouTubers fan theory videos that were each about 30 minutes long.

Game of Thrones has always been something me and my mum watch together, we have a few series that we cannot watch without one another like Big Little Lies, Handmaid’s Tale and yes, Game of Thrones. So, this meant when Game of Thrones was realised early house of Monday morning and either people stayed up to watched it or came home on Monday night and watched it, I could not. I could not watch the newest episode as I was at; university, 1 hour away from home, had no sky on my laptop and my mum wasn’t with me. So, I had to wait 2 weeks to watch the first episode… I had to eventually unfollow all the Game of Thrones pages on Instagram I was following so I was not exposed to any spoilers.

However, what did I make to the first episode? Brilliant. To be honest I was just happy that I wasn’t watching a repeated episode from one of the previous seasons and I was finally watching new material. I do admit, it was a bit slow. I wanted way more to happen and felt they were all just having very long chats but I kept telling myself there are plenty more episodes to watch so just relax…

CAN O WATER

I came across this amazing invention when I was down in London. I was in Harrods and I saw this can and at first, I thought it was some sort of fizzy drink… because that’s what you think when you see a can. But then I saw in bold writing ‘WATER’ and I was shook. I have never seen anything like this before. I mean CANED WATER? My instant reaction was to buy the whole entire shelf of them because I just wanted the company to take all my money. What a brilliant idea to sell caned water instead of plastic bottled water. My pet peeve is to see someone drinking from a plastic water bottle. Just get a reusable water bottle, what’s so hard? And it will probably save you money as well... but then I thought of a flaw to this product… you can’t reseal a can once its open so people will find it impractical to use if they wanted to put it back in their bags or save it for later.

THEN. I saw the top of the can and it was resalable. I just couldn’t believe it and brought one straight the way and only cost me £1…

I then started to research into this brand and came across their website. My first impression was PROFESSIONAL. It was so sleek and atheistically appealing to look at and they had their slogan on big bold letters. ‘A SOLUTION TO PLASTIC POLLUTION’. They also mentioned that their cans can be recycled and be back on their shelf with in 6 weeks. I mean isn’t that amazing!!!

Starting YouTube...

My friend Maya and I have been planning to make a YouTube for a few years and we’ve never really got around to do it until now. We started off planning a lot of videos so we wouldn’t run out of options every week. We want to make our channel quite versatile and not just focus in one particular topic like, just make up or just challenges or just vlogs.

Our first video we decided to do was a ‘how well we know each other challenge’. We have known each other for around about 8 years now (we met in year 7 on out first day at high school). We already knew each other’s darkest secrets but we thought it would be a great way to introduce our selves to our subscribers and tell them a little bit about ourselves and making it fun at the same time. We didn’t know what questions each other were going to ask and we were going to tally them up to see who won and knew the other person better.

It came to a draw and we thought the video went pretty well. We started to edit it together and we finished it pretty quickly. We then uploaded it on a Sunday afternoon and were blown away with the responses… To this current moment in time we reached about 1.3k views which we are over the moon by.

We knew that it would pay off (pushing our comfort zones) as we were so nervous wondering what everyone was going to think, but our family and friends were amazing and supported us by sharing and telling friends to subscribe.

Karl Largerfeld.

Karl was a German creative director and fashion designer for one of the biggest fashion houses in the world. Chanel. He took permanent residency in Paris and expressed his love for Parisian elegance and history. He was also the creative director for the Italian fashion house Fendi.

On the day of Karl’s death, across the world people expressed their condolences and where deeply upset. I was among them. Just one week prior to the passing, I was watching a documentary on Netflix called 7 days out and it was amazing. It showed everything you could possibly want to see back stage of one of his amazing SS18 show. Just the elegance behind it was incredible. I was astonished that someone could create such beauty.

Not only was this news shocking but also hugely overwhelming. How could Chanel ever be the same without Karl’s vision? But that wasn’t the only question to ask. Another main question to ask was who was going to be the next creative director for Chanel?

There had been speculation that it would be Virginie Viard, a French stylist. I did some research into Virginie Viard and she had joined the fashion house in 1987 and was in charge of embroidery. This gives me great comfort that someone that has been a part of Chanel for many years will be inheriting Karl’s role as they know the ins and outs to the fashion house and most likely had worked besides Karl throughout her career.

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Darcey Thompson