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The make up course allowed me to be a lot more expressive and experimental in my final outcome than I usually would be on creative direction. My focus for the project stemmed from the idea of the ‘Fashion Mistake’ ; more abstract and innovative methods are undertaken to create a look. The freedom of this area of make up is what drew me in. This took make up away from just focusing on enhancing the face/beauty of a person and elevates it into a more sophisticated and free craft in which the standard ‘rules’ of make up don’t apply. As a creative director, my urge to create a deeper meaning for the final piece was prominent, to create a meaningful yet striking piece of work.
This was my initial experiment in which I explored some of the themes associated with the ‘quarantine queen’. The look was more prop based and mainly involved the tissue paper attached to the mouth. To develop this I decided to add more colour and form to the look and try using a brushed up brow, glossy eye and blush to accentuate my features and make the overall look more finalised and actually apply the skills and inspiration I gained from the make up workshops.
I chose to envelop the three themes for my project as the final outcome was a satirical piece based around the idea of a ‘Quarantine Queen’. This was intended to be a provocative caricature of the response to Covid-19 and lockdown. Typically, as a nation, we over consume, but never before have we witnessed such a panic in the public leading to empty supermarkets and having to ration items in store to be able to provide to everyone. The initial panic of the public was ridiculous! Though there was no need to hoard food and sanitation items in any way, shelves were empty, leaving the most vulnerable members of society unable to attain their regular shopping. This provided quite a wake up call, many pictures of elderly people staring at empty shelves began circulating online and soon, the ‘quarantine queens’ were publicly shamed. The final piece was quite successful in presenting these ideas in a more editorial sense as the set and make up was not necessarily typical. The make up course opened my eyes to realising that you do not always need to do a full face or use actual make up products to create a powerful look; sometimes less is more effective.
Overall, I am pleased with my outcome as I was able to experiment with a different medium while still portraying clearly the message I set out to convey. It was very liberating to work around the idea of the ‘Fashion Mistake’ and to be able to focus more on communication rather than the typical skills. If I could improve this piece I would develop it further into an editorial with various models and looks as I think it is a powerful and relevant topic which greatly emphasises the Better Lives themes.
11th May 2020 @ 2:44 pm
Your quarantine queen was very interesting. It would have been better if I could see more experimental processes, but just a few images you posted were very interesting to me. We were able to see more sophisticated and free technologies without any ‘rules’ being applied, and it seems to be a more creative and experimental result, albeit in a quarantine period. It’s more interesting that this came from “fashion mistakes,” but it was not a mistake, but a really elaborate plan. Through Better Lives, she seemed to have realized a lot. I also felt very sorry for the consequences caused by COVID-19 and Lockdown, and I needed to criticize them, but I didn’t know it would turn out to be such an interesting outcome. Your idea is very good. Also, your way of expressing these ideas and your experiment process were good. The initial panic of the public was really funny, especially the photographs of older people staring at the empty shelves, according to your words. Through your reflection, I saw that it was no different from fashion. Fashion is also because so many people waste and consume it and deal with it in an inappropriate way to dispose of it. It’s as if people buy a lot of clothes they don’t need under the pretext of fashion and don’t wear them once a year without even knowing they’re in their closets. People don’t know how much carbon such clothes emit in the process of being processed, but they need to be informed. On the other hand, some people barely live on just a few donated clothes without even buying the least necessary clothes. I think these figures are very similar to this situation. I think we need to look back again on how much we are missing in our daily lives through this COVID-19. It really struck me that sometimes less is more effective. At a time when sustainability is emerging, we need to approach fashion with any discovery and minimal resources, not many and diverse production. It was very interesting to see that you didn’t have to do the entire face even if it was a makeup course, and you didn’t have to use actual cosmetics. I would recommend you to see better lives collection 1: power by Julia crew. You have done well enough and if you know or study more about the power of media or advertising about your results, I think it will be an opportunity to deliver your results to the public in a better way. As you know, the power of the media is very great. We can never ignore it and need to make it more widely known if there is a good-purpose project. If you want to focus more on communication, as well as your results, I would recommend it carefully.