Summary of blog posts

1st post: Choosing topic out of 6 questions

2nd post: Chosen the topic, question 4 'Fashion and music go hand in hand. Explore this concept and consider its implications for designers of your field. Also, my point of view about the fashion and music go hand in hand.

3rd post: Talk about punk and hip hop style. Subculture in the early years like 70s - 90s.

4th post: Photography exist in the subculture, in punk and hip hop trends.

5th post: Discussion about how is the music industry influenced fashion industry.

6th post: Not only about fashion and music, music and art also go hand in hand.

7th post: Study more about fashion and music during in the year 1980s.

8th post: Found an example of graphic designer who also a film director.

9th post: Discuss about fashion industry lead on music industry too, using cat walk as an example of it.

THE END :)

Catwalk need music too!

What else we can relate between music and fashion? If music is the domain, fashion is the support at the back. Oh ya, CATWALK! Music plays an important role in cat walk, as we can see cat walk event have a lot of musics as their background. I found a local example of the model as one of my research. Esther Tan is an instructor who won the Miss Chinatown Pageant 2004 and who’s now a constant figure in most major runway shows (Yee, 2011). She had shared about feeling the music and mood while walking to her students. So, music beats also important, it creates different type of mood and feeling towards a model's walking speed and a model's expression. Model should know when to start walking once music on, how to walk according to the mood of music, when to turn, pose and stop.

When everything clicked together, the model could show out the clothing itself. It is follow the fashion designers that designed those clothes who want their audiences to have what kind of mood and feeling when they look their clothes, so music could be the 'supporter' to portray all these feelings.

Here is a short catwalk clip, to let you see the works of beautiful combination between music and catwalk. You will realize models follow their the beat of musics while walking are also like dancers follow the beat to dance and you will feel it is just right.

(movieclipscomingsoon, 2015)

References

movieclipscomingsoon (2015) 'Zoolander 2 VIRAL VIDEO- Valentino Fashion Show (2016)- Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson Movie HD', YouTube, 10 March, [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRNwGimhok4 (Accessed: 25 June 2016)

Yee,M. (2011) 'Elegant Catwalk with Mood & Music', IAMTHEWITCH, 29 September, [Blog] Available at: http://iamthewitch.com/2011/09/29/elegant-catwalk-mood-music/ (Accessed: 25 June 2016)

The graphic designer aka film director

After a few explorations of music and fashion in some decades, so I wonder graphic design's role in film industry? From what I research, I found out there is one example of a graphic designer who work in film industry. Mike Mills is a graphic designer, also a film director.

 Mike Mills

He came to movie making via a career as a graphic designer and artist. So he took this opportunity to put graphics into his movie called 'Beginners'. Beginners also offers a small but amusing insight into the life of a graphic designer, so roughly the movie is about the life of graphic designer which is include love, family and lifestyle (Williams, 2011). While Mills’ graphics output has lessened over the years, Mike Mills said "Beginners' has actually led to some new projects, the movie brought a lot of it back (Williams, 2011)." So his movie's posters were also in kind of graphic sense and also apply with his own style ,a line of posters and fabric prints (picture 1.0 and 1.1).

Picture 1.0

Picture 1.1

Not only in film industry, he also helped Beastie Boys' new album cover (picture 2.0). 

Picture 2.0

Besides, he also helped Carrie Brownstein’s new band to do their album cover, called Wild Flag (picture 3.0).

Picture 3.0

Mike Mills also mentioned that the music video market has fall off so radically since he was really making them, but he still doing it for his some favorite ones (Williams, 2011). So graphic designer can actually goes around the industry, even in the film industry or music industry, graphic designer still has a role in behind of the scene.

References

Williams,E. (2011) 'Mike Mills on Beginners, graphic design and music videos', creativereview, 19 July, [Online] Available at:
http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2011/july/mike-mills-on-beginners-graphic-design-and-music-videos/ (Accessed: 24 June 2016)

1980s - fashion and music

After a brief with my lecturer, Daniel, he asked me to focus on the past like 80s of music and fashion. In this post, I will talk more about music and fashion in the 1980s. Lets take a look at the fashion in the 1980s, the early 80s were subdued in colour, so we can see that there is a lot of browns, tans and oranges (Phipps, 2016). The blocky shapes (picture 1.0) and dressing like a tennis players were everywhere and it considered a very cool fashion at that moment. For both men and women, their waistline was a little high, actually in the early 1980s' fashion is a little similar with 1970s' fashion. By that time they wore high waist jeans, denim jackets with clothes tuck in. (picture 2.0 & 2.1) We can see that there is some similarities with the 1970s' fashion, but this is also a fashion trends in the early 1980s.

Picture 1.0

 Picture 2.0

Picture 2.1

Until the mid-1980s, there goes slightly different with the colours because pop music stars like Cyndi Lauper (picture 3.0) were ushering in new style, which is more vibrant and bright colours (Phipps, 2016). It totally different with what I showed just now, which the colours are more dull in the early 1980s. So, bright colours of clothing and accessories like sunglasses, bangles and hoop earings were a fundamental. Teased hair with heavy make up and neon were an important part of this style (picture 3.1). It is because of pop musicians who brings up a new trends again and kick away the dull colours style.

 Picture 3.0

Picture 3.1

So you can see how is the pop music star can influenced their music fans so much until it becomes a trend with her special high kick look and also musics. How about the music in the 1980s? In 1980s, music was all about images and popularity of MTV. The images that accompanied artist become more important, because he 1980s reflected the beginning of a period of great income disparity and a focus on affluence was reflected in the music (thepeoplehistory, 2015). There were also some new genre musics that popped up including hip hop, new wave, hair metal, all of which have influenced music today (thepeoplehistory, 2015). Some pop music stars like Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Madonna, and more, they bring up the famous musics also they had affected a lot of their music fans in such a way of their fashion too by looking their album cover and MTV.

So you can see there are so many famous pop stars in the 1980s that ushered a new trend of musics and fashion to their music fans and others. Also, the evolution of the style in just few years.

References

Phipps,P. (2016) 'Fashion in the 1980s', retrowaste, 22 January, [Online] Available at: http://www.retrowaste.com/1980s/fashion-in-the-1980s/ (Accessed: 24 June 2016)

thepeoplehistory (2015) 'Music Played in the 1980's Popular Music From the 80s', [Online] Available at: http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/80smusic.html (Accessed: 24 June 2016)

Music and Art

Back to 70s until 90s, we still get to see all those album cover, but in these days we look at the album cover, do you really see a lot of it? No, yet you see a lot of videos. In the previous post, I mentioned about album cover. Album cover design is using photography to take it, and designers contribute a lot on this path. When comes to music videos, which is the second generation, everyone might know that it is directors' job. So the contribution of designers these days are less distance to it or in other way?

The music video is often use as a marketing tool for promoting an album, but with help of the artist, music video can also be extraordinary works of art in their own way (Lynch, 2014). For instance, in 2013, artist Pharell Williams came out with a fresh new approach, that is the world's first 24-hour music video powered by a direction team We Are From L.A. It is the famous music 'Happy'. (Video from YouTube)

Whatever the contribution is, artists are bringing the visual aspect of music to the next level (Lynch, 2014). Not only artists have worked hard to bridge the gap between art and music, but there are always have a bunch of designers supporting it behind the screen because all these visualize thing in the video, is actually creative director and designers that plan everything on the entire videos.

Might as well as the other videos like, Donna Summer's 'Love To Love You Baby'. (Video from YouTube) The music video is delivered in street art style inspired ode to summers. After the video was completed, Verve Music Group had the artist design promotion materials for the project also as the album's packaging (Lynch, 2014). The main reason of searching this is because, not only music and fashion go hand in hand, there are connection between music and art too. Arts can be appear in the music videos as well as the fashion also been recognize in the music video. Eventually, music is the domain of brings up the fashion trends and also arts.

References

DonnaSummerVEVO (2013) 'Love To Love You Baby', YouTube, 18 December, [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeIL252seZo (Accessed: 23 June 2016)

iamOTHER (2013) '21 24', YouTube, 23 October, [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_YNHV7uNJ8 (Accessed: 23 June 2016)

Lynch,S. (2014) 'The Best Visual Artist-Directed Music Videos of All Time', complex, 7 Feb, [Online] Available at: http://www.complex.com/style/2014/02/the-best-artist-directed-music-videos/ (Accessed: 23 June 2016)

Music industry lead on the fashion industry

Music and fashion go hand in hand in the sense of music can influence fashion, also fashion could influence music too.

Music is not just about music anymore, it is also about other things. It is the designers who are able to exist musicians in furthering their career, also expanding their popularity by looking at album cover design. Album cover design is the first generation of the designers' role comes in. So, let's talk about how is the music industry lead on the fashion industry. When there's music, ofcourse there's album cover, so one of the reason that who buys the album cover is the musician fans, second is the design of the cover. Is it look nice? If yes, we will buy it too, and we will visualize their styles, dressing. That is why music fans tend to follow or copy the looks of them from their favorite musicians which then create trend in the fashion industry (Nzei-Ebosele, 2015).

In the 80s saw the emergence of dance music, country music and new wave like rap, RnB, rock and roll. There were more significance on fashion accessories, women who wore large scarves, leather trench and fur coats, big and spiral hair styles. One musician that greatly bring up the trend of fashion in the 80s is Madonna (Nzei-Ebosele, 2015).

Besides, the famous American hip hop group- RUN DM, as known as the first hip hop group merge with rock and rap. Most of their album cover were in Adidas brand because Adidas formed a long-term relationship with Run DMC.

(Maximum Run DMC album cover, Run DMC)

Not only that, in 1986, Run DMC had a track of new album that hit up the fashion industry too. The album is 'My Adidas', it is also the beginning of modern hip hop style sensation, sneaker culture and  product endorsements (Pratt, 2014). 

They also have a billboard of their album, with adidas logo on it, suit up with adidas clothes. This is also a way to promote their new album, new song and also the fashion part, which is what they're wearing. As this is 80s' trend, people also start to dress up with hip hop look.

However, the fashion legacy of Run DMC and their shell-toed Adidas is much more than the evolution of a new revenue driver for performers and brands alike (Pratt, 2014). Hip hop style, streetwear, sportwears brand- Adidas are increasingly intimately relationship between music and fashion, in some way or another that affected by the group (Pratt, 2014).

Moving to 90s, we saw the growth of hip hop and rap music from the previous years which is 70s and 80s. Although all these are popular, electronic music that was introduced in 80s was now in demand in the 90s too. It is a mainstream that every kind of the musics mix together. So that the top hit of this decade include tracks from top musicians like Snoop Doggy Dog, Jay Z, Ice Cube and the list goes on (Nzei-Ebosele, 2015). So they were also brings up those wash denim, high waist jeans, oversized sweaters and crop tops insanely in this decade.

I have found that, nowadays the fashion and music, like denim, high waist jeans, even korean style are all repeating the same thing from all these decades like 70s, 80s and 90s. Music and fashion will never end this long-term relationship until the doomsday.


References

Nzei-Ebosele, N. (2015) 'Influence Of Music Industry On The Fashion Industry', 29 April, [Blog] Available at: https://augfashion.com/2015/04/29/influence-of-music-on-the-fashion-industry/#more-87 (Accessed: 21 June 2016)

Pratt, R.M (2014) ' Run-D.M.C.'s 'My Adidas' and the Birth of Hip Hop Sneaker Culture', BusinessofFashion, 18 July, [Online] Available at: https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/video/run-d-m-c-s-adidas-birth-hip-hop-sneaker-culture (Accessed: 23 June 2016)

Existing of photography in Punk and Hip-Hop trends

Well, if there is fashion and music exist, of course there is photography to enhance the entire things. This is called as a trend from fashion and music. In the early 70s and 80s, their trends are punk and hip hop style. Both of these styles become a life force within itself in society, and as sub-culture it tend to collapse quite heavily on politics but punk and hip hop do actually care about the state of the world, and this is often reflected in music or imagery.

Photography is capturing a moment, a culture. Photography in the fashion and music has categorize in photography fashion and photography music. It is a different method to convey different meaning. Fashion photography sells a lifestyle, also music photography sells a culture. It actually goes hand in hand where both of these can be exchange with each other.

How do the photographer get into punk and hip hop scenes? As I mentioned both styles had become a life force in the society, all these scene was happening around. You can imagine the street with all grafitti, the band which transformed themselves into rockers, concert or festival.

About Punk and Hip-Hop

Not to mention nowadays' fashion, every youngsters seem to follow Korean style, like the way they wear, look and act, it is all because of Korean wave. But, when comes to fashion, punk and hip hop are the fashion that crossover my mind. Which one come first? Punk or hip hop? From what I research, I found that punk fashion comes first and hip hop is the sub domain. Punk evolved in the UK during 1970s. Punk rock is the rock music genre that hit up the wave of psychedelic and folk rock music introduced in the '60s. In the early of '70s, rock and roll had a new beauty image by dressed like a rocker, example of David Bowie and Marc Bolan (Bio, 2016). They start to spread out the vibe of punk fashion and music to all their fans and others. Following by the hot trend of rock and roll, a lot of younger rockers followed the style of them, of course this trend is hot in the early of 70s. Not only that, the music of the '70s inspired fashion as well by designer Vivienne Westwood (Bio, 2016).

Punk fashion is the clothing, cosmetic, hairstyle, jewellery and body modification of punk subculture (Wikipedia, 2015). Besides, the punk movement's influence on photography as well. The way models pose, hairstyle, expression of the eyes and clothing. Let us take a look at the ritual moment punk fashion that hit over the world, even some of the advertisements were get the inspiration from punk style.

Well, I personally think that punk fashion isn't dead because Samsung,sony and hardrock cafe are still inspired by the style of it, they used the style to create their advertisements too.

 
Until in the early of 1980s, hip-hop style has became another trend of fashion and music. It is an extraordinary style of dress originating from Africa America and Puerto Rican kids from the South Bronx whereby punk is in the UK side (Weinstock, 2016). Even though punk and hip-hop are in the different countries but they also shared similarities of both subculture. They have some connection between itself, shared same DIY aesthetic, it is actually inspired from each other. For example, RUN DMC who was sighted as the first hip hop group to merge rock and rap when look back what was happening in 70s and 80s, it was reported important conversation and cultural exchange that was taking place with hardcore b-boys from South Bronx and the restrict rebellious punk kids in Manhattan (Davey, 2013).

So here is a bit of histories about punk and hip hop. 


References

Bio (2016) 'London Punk Cultural-Icons: 1970s', [Online] Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/groups/london-punk-cultural-icons-1970s (Accessed: 10 June 2016)

Davey,D (2013) 'The Connection Between Hip Hop, New Wave and Punk', 6 February, Hip Hop and Politics, [Online] Available at: http://hiphopandpolitics.com/2013/02/06/the-connection-between-hip-hop-new-wave-and-punk/ (Accessed: 12 June 2016)

Weinstock,T (2016) 'the photographer who defined punk and hip hop', 2 February, i-D, [Online] Available at: https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/the-photographer-who-defined-punk-and-hip-hop (Accessed: 12 June 2016)

Wikipedia (2015) 'Punk fashion', [Online] Available at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punk_fashion (Accessed: 10 June 2016)

My point of view in fashion and music

As you may see my previous post is about question choosing. I had chosen question 4 out of the six questions, which is fashion and music go hand in hand. Explore this concept and consider its implications for designers of your field.

So, to me, yes, fashion and music go hand in hand. Well, to me fashion and music collaborate, it consist ART! And so, what is art? This question always pop out but art cannot be defined. You draw, you live, you walk, you snap, everything you do is also consider as an art. 

Fashion is a trend, a culture, an art. You style yourself in a way that you like, as well as you are making art on yourself by putting clothes, accessories, and cosmetic on it. Beside, fashion has been using music as a source of inspiration too. It collaborates well with one and another. Should say that fashion is as important as music, because it spilled out rapidly. Where do people get all the message of the fashion trend? They do get from movie, drama and music! There are even times that a new music released, people will also dress up like them, because they want to follow new thing, new trend. Music can influence people by dressing, thinking and feeling.

When music meets the latest trend, designers and some fashion start to conscious can be creative when launching a whole collections of that serves a tribute or you may easily see young people or 'fashionista' who swaggering around with their stuff with the same taste in clothing. Nowadays people might wear a pair of jeans with oversized shirt, or they prefer some hipster clothing or simple subculture fashion. A chance that designers can explore their designs in fashion and music to grab attentions from others, and to realize about you, designers.