a certain romance

As we're currently (well over) a week into our first real project on 'romance' I thought it might be a good time to reflect on the findings and feelings that have been thrown up by our task. After thoroughly enjoying remaining well within my comfort zone when collecting the secondary research in order to further our contextual and historical understanding, I can't say I was too excited to venture into the real world to collect some data of our own. I have to say that our initial approach was some what haphazard. With little co-ordination and only a lose grasp of what we were actually meant to be doing as a team, we somewhat prematurely burst into the shops of Nottingham, snapping shots of merchandise erratically, and ending up with a collection of what I can only call crap. A team meeting and a discussion with Henry Later, we began to observe patterns in our crap, patterns that we realised we could draw out and develop into fully fledged points. We noticed a few key themes emerging:

-Colour stories (deep reds, purples, pinks)

-Red and black

-Lace

-Midnight Garden

-Gold luxe maximalism

-Romance in Athleisure.

With these in mind our mission suddenly became clear, and our purpose more resolute. We agreed to divide and conquer, as we knew that we had more chance of spotting more if we each looked for all of the trends, rather than restricting our vision to just one theme. I was surprised just how hard approaching strangers would be. As some one not easily embarrassed, and usually very little regard for other people's opinions of me, I expected the task to be a breeze. I was wrong. The first 20 minutes of our venture out involved me and my partner staring silently as tens of people in blush tones and floaty sleeves rushed past us, clearly not wanting to be interrupted . Finally we found plucked up the courage to approach a woman in the perfect floor length red and pink number.

Score.

Sadly, by this point anyone in Nottingham wearing something even slightly fitting with out brief decided to go home. Around two hours later and with rain on the horizon, with only two usable photos we called it a day. We decided instead to take to the shops to once again look at shop content, this time focusing on our 6 themes, which was highly successful if we do say so ourselves. Luckily with a few more trips out we collected a substantial amount of imagery, we noticed that pinks and reds, along with romantic accents applied to sportswear were the prominent trends on the street. With midnight garden, lace and luxe proving harder to find.

Overall I have to say that after finding our feet, our secondary research went better than I expected. Despite my initial aversions to group work, I found that working as a team really did make the job easier and the overall outcome much stronger than I could've produced on my own. I look forward to seeing how our mood boards pan out and our presentation develops.