Week 4 - Converse & Visual Codes

Today we looked at a Converse, their latest campaign was quite interesting to look at, it's called 'Sneakers get loud', people made viral videos - example video is below - where people would make a viral video for a chance to win prizes. They also created a place where up and coming bands can go to record and perform music at Converse Rubber Tracks Studio in Brooklyn. Converse would then use that music in their adverts and the bands would gain free promotion and even prizes.
We also looked into a little bit of Converse's history, the shoe began as a basketball sneaker and didn't really become a trendy item until the 1950's when it was the 'birth of the teenager' where teenagers started to be individual instead of wearing what their parents did. Converse became even more successful in the 1970's punk era, they were very much worn as they would last a long time, they weren't too expensive and many people liked the worn look and the fact you could make them your own by drawing on them with permanent markers.
Eventually Nike bought converse, Rob Walker said 'Discovering that Nike had bought Converse was like hearing Elvis Costello had started writing jingles for Microsoft' and with Converse originally wanting to come across as individual there was a bit of controversy.

In our seminar  we discussed visual codes, we started off by being given a bunch of photos in our groups and having to group them up, our groups were; models, fashion icons, brands, interiors & architecture and non-fashion influences.

We then had to pick on of the photos that stood out to us the most, the image of Lily Cole stood out to me most, I think I was mainly drawn to the bold contrast between her ginger hair and the green dress she is wearing. I'm also a big lover of makeup and I loved the look she's wearing in the photography, I'm also a lover of fashion photography and she also looked quite fierce in the image which also made it stand out.

We then had to bring in an image of ourselves wearing an outfit we would normally wear and we had to describe our own style. 

I would describe my own style as relaxed and quite minimal, I don't tend to wear many accessories and if I do they tend to be neutral and not too much of a statement. Currently I really like wearing faux leather which is quite a big trend this A/W.

Then in pairs we had to describe each others style from the images we'd brought in without showing what we thought about our own style. We were also given questions to fill in to get to know each other for example 'What do you love?', 'What music do you like?' and more.