'Ruffle - mania' A Styling Shoot

Towards the end of my first year of university I had a project which involved creating a styling shoot for an upcoming trend of the season, the trend in question was "ruffles" which were all the rage for summer 2017, I thought that I would share some of the images that came out of the shoot as I am quite proud of them and think it was an interesting aspect of my course that I thoroughly enjoyed.

The project was done in groups and we were in charge of everything, from concept and outfits to location, photography, direction and models. This was challenging but extremely rewarding and a new experience for all of us. With the trend ruffles and a student budget in mind we first went in search of inspiration, the pinterest board initially created can be seen here, which shows we considered a lot of different ideas for concept and posing, and it was really enjoyable to look through past photoshoots and take elements from each to come up with a whole new concept that might work for this trend in order for it to be marketed in summer.

The end photos were shot in a disused tennis court at the University of Nottingham which had surrounding greenery and an overgrown element that contributed nicely to the atmosphere of the photos. The overall concept was 'secret garden' as we decided with the long history of the trend it would be complimented well by this and a shoot in an urban environment with edgy styling just wouldn't work. However we included the tennis court element to add interest and give contrast and structure against the natural elements within the shoot, although the abandoned look of the court then takes this back to really getting across the idea of the theme. The mood we wanted to create was an alluring and mysterious one and we made decisions within the styling and poses to try and capture this, for example the choice for the models to not wear shoes. The lighting was also very important to us to get this across, we wanted it to be natural and create interesting effects within the photos , which you might be able to see throughout, as we really wanted it to have a dreamy vibe. The actual clothes used in the styling of the shoot were ones already owned by members of the group that they had bought in the new season collections as we were working to a student budget and so this was where we were slightly restricted. With this we still tried to take a considered approach to the styling and took inspiration from what we had seen in the market environment and on the catwalk for the season with designers such as Molly Goddard and House of Holland really utilizing the ruffle trend in their collections. We took this inspiration and put together the looks in a more wearable way that would appeal to the casual summer consumer.

Overall I really enjoyed the whole experience of this project and loved the creative freedom that came with it. Our group worked really well together, and collating all our ideas and making use of each of our strengths resulted in a photoshoot that I am proud of. The models were also excellent and very patient with us newbies to directing an entire shoot which was helpful and eased us slightly. I would love to do something like this again as I think i've learnt loads and would go into it with a lot more know-how second time round and I think there is a lot more in this area which I would love to explore further. If you would like to see the full Trend Map report that I put together alongside this shoot you can click here.