Saturday, September 10, 2016

London College Of Fashion Editorial Styling Course

London was fantastic, I loved it and would have happily stayed longer as I didn't get my fill.  The styling course was great, there was a class of 11 and we had a brilliant tutor, Lucy London who is smart and knowledgeable.  I was at the Lime Grove campus which is a beautiful building inside and out, and the weather was hot and sunny most days.  I was pretty pleased with the outcome of my shoot - I'm still to see the edited photos but the snaps I got on my phone from standing behind the photographer look great.


On the first day Lucy established what the class understood about styling before we had a discussion about the different kinds of styling, the functions of styling, trend forecasting, customer profiling and shoot concepts and she gave us the introduction to our briefs.


The second day was carrying out the analysis of the magazine you chose to do a hypothetical shoot for, and profiling their typical readership so all aspects of your styling were relevant to the customer base.  I chose to go for Grazia given that I'm a regular reader if that magazine and fall into mist categories of their typical readership (pretty independent, interested in current affairs, human rights, keeping up with fashion while remaining creatively minded) as opposed to a magazine like Vogue whose readers are spoon-fed ready made luxury looks.  I also need more commercial images in my portfolio so these images should be ideal.  The class was given a choice of four themes and the theme I chose was Out Of This World which suited me completely given my interest in transhumanism and more importantly i had clothing that suited that theme.  One of a couple of big drawbacks about the course was that there was no clothing provided, no connections to up & coming designers and that students who had travelled for the course were potentially left high and dry here.  It was only by luck I'd packed a silver top, a metallic dress and had bought another metallic dress en route to Glasgow Central Station on Monday morning.  Another issue was that no professional model had been booked for the shoot day (I mean, come on!!) and again it was by pure luck there was a stunning, slim, tall girl I was sitting next to who I asked if she'd model on my shoot - and ended up modelling on two or three other shoots with other students.  On the Wednesday evening i spent a good couple of hours traipsing Oxford Street to get shoes and accessories, and trying to track down a pair of silver shirts I'd have loved to have used in one of the looks.  No luck with the shorts but check for silver eye shadow pencil, silver nail varnish, a mesh top, 2 pairs of metallic shoes, white tights, a silver skirt and lots of jewellery.  I was pretty laden down!

On the shoot day I was scheduled after lunch.  Kara, my model, modelled her own shoot plus I think two others.  There was great camaraderie among the students, helping prep, assisting with make up etc and from what I saw of everyone else's images we got a good body of work between us all.

I also met up with Carly on Thursday evening for my first theory class of her course which includes doing four shoots between now and the start of December, and in addition to that I had time to go to an introductory workshop she ran on the Saturday morning which was an amazing addition to the week.  And as it turns out, a lovely girl called Hannah who did the LCF course got one of the last two places on the same course I'm doing with Carly (with a wee recommendation from me ๐Ÿ˜€).  I had my introductory class at Shoreditch House, a very salubrious private member's club.  I got the tube back from Liverpool Street to Great Portland Street and encountered a very drunk funny Irish guy who'd been 'out for lunch' since midday.

I made all my store returns on Friday morning, crashed out for an hour or two after lunch then met up with a make up artist late afternoon and spent the rest of the evening relaxing - much needed!  I got the train home on Saturday afternoon.  I'd stayed in a dorm in student accomodation on Great Portland Street.  Getting my bearings a couple of times in the first two days was stressful and the tube was a bit of a headache on the Thursday evening, but luckily I get to grips with things quickly so settled in fast.  I hadn't had my fill of London and can't wait to go back in early October.  I had a nice lunch with a glass of wine before getting the train.  Back in Glasgow I felt a comedown - people walk i n g   s o   s l o w l y  it's just a joke, two neds having a Barney on Hope St at 6 in the evening and it was pissing down. I cried when I got home but had a clearer head in the morning.

I've now got an even clearer focus on my portfolio and directions and I'm more motivated to make this all succeed ๐Ÿ˜€.

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