Wednesday 29 October 2008

03 Theme Board

The 30 collections are not finished yet.
Other then the colours design, it's the matter of time...orz
However, I have done the theme board first as I have other uses of it, too.


As the theme is running water, blue and green hues are used mainly. Sharp colours are also used to provide sense of freshness.

02 Colour collections

Suddenly remember that I have not upload the collections which was months ago.
Here is the first collection. (Before listening to the theories)


Here is the latter one. (After listening to the theories of colour boxs)

Sunday 26 October 2008

Marc Jacobs - Conclusions

(1) More hues are used for recent year

(2) Achromatic colors : black, white and grey must be present in each season's collection

(3) A simple combination is adopted. for each outfit,the no. of colour is usually not more than 3.

(4) MJ likes to use artificial colors.

(5) MJ uses colors of high saturation every season, but the amount decreases in recent seasons.

(6) Spring and Fall colors are related. the colors used in Fall collection are usually the colors of spring collection in a lower value (with shade).

(7) There is a trend that MJ tends to use colors in lower values.

(8) MJ loves lavender , violet, brilliant red, turquoise, yellowish brown, khaki. they almost appear in every collection. BLACK, WHITE, GREY are the must.

Marc Jacobs - S/s 2007

For the colour palette of this collection, Marc Jacobs chose to use white, cream, black for contrast, and ombréd grays. This can contribute the feeling of light, kindness, peace, and generosity. He didn't talked about his actual inspiration, but those feeling has shared with the audience perfectly.

In order to make the colours combination more presentable, Marc Jacobs painted the runway in a awn green way just like mint candies. The fresh and sharp colour bring out the blur light and peace image even when the collections has not yet shown on the stage.

Here are the collection's photos:


Saturday 25 October 2008

Colour Wheel Analysis of Collections

The following are the colours' allocation of S/s 2003, F/w 2003 and F/w 2007.



It is clealy that Marc Jacobs likes the colours in red and blue hues. Those colours are near to primary colours but there are always slight differences. Colours are getting richer as the later collections are designed. Sharp and dark greens are rarely used in collections.However pastel green often appear in other fashion products of Marc Jacobss.

Marc Jacob - Collection S/S + F/W 2008

comparing S/S and F/W
some of the colors like turquoise, lavender and pale pink are repeated used,
this kind of colors give a feeling of softness, comfort and femininity.
khaki are often used, too.
the color of the 2 collections are quite similar actually.
except that in the F/W collection there are some metallic colors.

one more pointed noted is that, marc jacobs displays the color of the same hue but different values in the same outfits. and throughout the collection, hue of different values and intensities are used in the outfits, usually in a small portion, decorating a black majority. violet and turquoise are mostly used.

From Group Mate: Sandra

Marc Jacobs - Comparison with competitor

2008 Christian Dior Fall /Winter

Shocking Red, Shocking Pink, Sharp Orange, Sharp Purple , dark Turquoise, yellowish-khaki , black, white

fabrics : Satin, Fur, Silk

comparison : both of the collection involved a lot of black and white, while grey is the color that Jacobs always love. MJ still sticked to the pastel colors while CD tried some sharp colors.

Christian Dior 2008 S/S
Color used: Shocking red, pastel turquoise, khaki, brown, shocking orange, black, white

fabric: silk, satin

pattern: leopard skin, zebra skin

comparison: both of MJ and CD use pastel colors in soft fabrics to create a feminine soft figure.
it seemed that pastel color and soft figure was the trend of the season.

From Group Mate: Sandra

Friday 24 October 2008

Marc Jacobs - F/W 2003

Marc Jacobs kept on his colourful style in this season and giving audience crashes with high satuation colours.

The inspiration of this collection is punk rock, with overt references to the sixties space-age. The colours, orange, blue, beige, white, pink, violet, and red really give people a strong visual splashing effect. Orange, blue and white is a non-original combination conducts a space-age feeling and makes people imagine a space shuttle which made of artifical materials. Moreover, the smash of colours is even more serious to highlight the theme of punk rock.

Comparing to the S/s2003 collection, the values of colours are relatively higher to give a warm and solid feeling to wearers.

Here are the collections and their main colour board:





Main Colour Board

Thursday 23 October 2008

Marc Jacobs - S/S 2003

In this collection, opposites play important roles. Sweet and softness meet the hard edge and generate the interesting silhouettes.

To conduct dramatic contrast, colours are well-chosen, too. For example, soft pink, lavender, pale yellow, orange, chartreuse, and ivory are chosen for under boxy jackets and sexy camisole tops. For even greater contrast, soft, airy fabrics are used to against dense ribbed ottoman, nubby, and others.

Comparing this collection with the F/W 2003 one, there are many simular main colours, like light grey & dark grey, black & white, and light purple.

If the 2 collection are compared to the F/W 2007, it is clear that Marc Jacobs still use those main colours in the latter collection and add more colours from different hues, like those from red hue.

The following are the pieces in collection S/S 2003 and the main colours board:




Main Colours Board

Monday 20 October 2008

Marc Jacobs - FW 2007 03

Here are some more colours picked up in the collections.

And the last one is the Main Colour Board of the whole collection.





Main Colour Board for the FW 2007 Collection
>

Marc Jacobs - 2008 F/W

although it shall be a cold winter, Marc Jacobs 's F/W collection appears that it shall be a warmer one. i do not know if it is because of the global warming problem, but it must be related to his S/S collection. Pastel color of both warm and cool colors: orange-pink, khaki, lavender, violet, turquoise and orange-red.

just like the S/S collection, black are often used with grey in various shade.
grey in different shade in one outfit creates layering in a subtle way. an image of formality, simplicity and elegance is moulded.

but even if the majority is grey or black, MJ added bright colors to accessories and shoes.
the outfit is thus more playful.

apart from pastel colors, metallic colors are also used.golden and silver color, some mixed with a bit of brown dark blue and grey, make the costume shiny and spendid.

Thursday 16 October 2008

Marc Jacobs - FW 2007 02

In the interview, Marc Jacobs said that the Fall/ Winter 2007 collection was probably the most personal collection. The change in Marc Jacobs are pretty obvious but his main characteristics are still kept. For example, there are still many garments with special fabric treatment. It enables the colours changing due to light sources and wearers' movements.

It is said that Marc Jacobs is a innovative designer who always gave you something unexpected. On the contrary, this collection was so "safe" and contained less eye-catching designs.

Video from style.com:
2007 SPRING/SUMMER runway-MARC JACOBS

Marc Jacobs - Experience Background 03

Marc Jacobs worked in companies like Perry Eills and Louis Vuitton. They are both called as classic brands.

Perry Eills is a famous brand in America from mid-1970s. It started as a fashionable sportswear house and then launched sportswear, womenswear and menswear. The chief designer Perry Eills himself was called as "the ideal American sportswear designer of the time " because of the clean-cut yet casual style. Its Menswear Collection was widely successful, and marked by "non-traditional, modern classics". That is how he created the "new classics".

Perry Eills may be one of the factors for the strong American feeling in Marc Jacobs' collection. The simple cutting and using only few colours in a set of clothing are both characters of Perry Eills and Marc Jacobs.

For Louis Vuitton, not to mention its supreme fame in fashion industry, is a French luxury fashion and leather goods brand. It was admired as the most counterfeited contemporary classics by mature ladies all around the world for years. Its pale-brown and continuous pattern can be easily recognised.

Louis Vuitton has been the classics from france to the whole world. Its brand image is elegant, luxury and feeling of understated. It seems that Marc Jacobs wanted to create classics in a new and novelty forms. In his recent collection, he talked about elegant and noble. Moreover, he was fame for gaving 50s to 70s classics reborn!

The colours of Marc Jacobs are either monochromatic or have eye-catching effects, but none of them cause any uncomfortable or unpleasant visual images. That is how classics work with colours.

Marc Jabcobs Fall 2007 Runway Show - Fashion Indie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEGLlL8Iklw

Reference: wikipedia http://www.wikipedia.com

Marc Jacobs - F/W 2007 01

Marc Jacobs has a full range of Fall/ Winter collection in 2007 and continued showing his flavour in vintage.

This time, he has chosen to bring 70s back on stage again. Those hats, long coats, ribbed sweaters, trousers with loose stirrups and last but mot least, the jumpsuits, were fancy stuffs of that time. However, when they were in the multi-colours and matching the super-slim silhouette, new images were emerged.


According to Nicole Phelps, Marc Jacobs said that the collection is a reflection of his personal life and feeling, called it restraint. Therefore, sharp colours are less and the proportion of black & grey increased. Those sharp colours in the collections were all tertiary colours in the red and the yellow hues. There are mainly orange, dark red, dark purple and yellowish orange.

Following are part of the collection. The main colour being used are picked out.

Photos : style.com

Saturday 11 October 2008

Marc Jacobs - Experience Background 02

At 15, Jacobs worked as a stockboy at Charivari, an avant-garde clothing boutique in New York. That was much before entering design schools, showing his interest in fashion in youth period.

During his school life in Parsons, he designed and sold his first line of hand-knit sweaters. He also designed his first collection for Reuben Thomas, Inc. After graduation, he worked as a designer in Perry Ellis. Obviously, this label has great impact towards his career and fashion concept. He has launched the famous "grunge" collection in those days. It leaded to his dismissal in 1993.

He opened Jacobs Duffy Designs Inc. with Robert Duffy, which is a famous design company till nowadays.

In 1989, Jacobs and Duffy joined the women's design unit of Tristan Russo as Vice President and President, respectively.

In 1997, Jacobs was appointed Creative Director of luxury French fashion house, Louis Vuitton, where he created the company's first ready-to-wear line and has worked till today.

These precious experience in working with those prominent brands affects his design elements and choosing of colours. Therefore, I am going to study it in latter articles

Marc Jacobs - Experience background 01

Marc Jacobs engaged in different kinds of crossover products for years. E.g., Marc Jacobs x Vans Fall 2007 Collection.

Novelty colours are used and rubber caps are added to the veteran shoes. There are both artificial colours and natural colour, pale green, in the collection. They creates sense of comfort and light. This is quite different from the formal feeling of Marc Jacobs ready-to-wear.



Photos: http://hypebeast.com/2007/08/marc-jacobs-x-vans-fall-2007-collection/

Thursday 9 October 2008

Marc Jacobs - Decade Background

Marc Jacobs was born in 1960s, which was inside the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends which occurred roughly during the years 1956–1974 in US. Therefore, hippies and counter-culture emerged.

1960s was also known as the decade of he new, exciting, radical, and subversive events and trends, including fashion culture. Drugs also became popular among youths, especially for show biz. Pop, rock, reggae, soul and blues music developed rapidly. This period of time gave Marc Jacobs a nice foundation to absorb novelty fashion concepts and add these elements in those classic products.

For 1970s to 1980s, they was probably the most influential period to Marc Jacobs, as he was a teenager and absorbed a lot from the surroundings.

1970s was still in the complex years and hippies culture continued. Besides that, the whole Western countries experienced an economic recession and the living standard of people dropped. That may give us a clue that why Marc Jacorbs has great interest in the 40s' and 50s' fashion trends, comparing to the items in his decade.

In 40s and 50s, World War II affected the whole world in economy, culture and social aspects. Dark colours and stand sleeves always appeared in western fashion to create a military and safe feeling. Moreover, to create sense of uniformity, regular forms, balance in both structures and colours are emphasized. For balance in colour, Split complementary color scheme and Tetradic (double complementary) color scheme were prefered.

These key elements appears in Marc Jacobs 2009 S/S collection with Marc Jacobs' own modifications, mainly in cutting and styles of usages. For colours, he seems to like using Split complementary colour scheme with different in shade and value.

Here are some examples below.

Dark Colours

1/2 proportion & contrasting colours

Photos: http://07176470d.blogspot.com/ (groupmate)
Reference:
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940s
Google: http://www.google.com/

Sunday 5 October 2008

Marc Jacobs - Geographic background

Marc Jacobs is a well-known designer in US. He was born in NY and spent most of his life there. Teaneck, New Jersey was once his living place but not for long. He is a 60's person as he was born in 1963.

In that time, NY has already been a well-developed central city for a long time. It was also an international metropolitan. Even for Teaneck, it is a suburb of NY with about 39,260 population.

His school life was also in High School of Art and Design and Parsons School of Design, NY. The former is quite famous for its Fashion department which located prominently in the heart of the city's Garment District in midtown.

The economy of US was already affecting nations internationally, and the city was developing extremely fast. The society was so wealthy and capable to all kinds of luxury goods. That gave great opportunities for different fashion styles.

Spending most of his life in NY obviously helped him to develop his sense in both fashion and colours. For example, those exposures of different cultures and fashion styles helped him to use different colours even in his early days. Moreover, urbanization in NY has affected his choice of colours. He seems to be interested in using tertiary colours and colours in high tone. Till now, in the recent collection, he still use a lot of these colours and create a feeling of urban and artificial classic.

Here are some photos of Marc Jacobs' recent collection:











Reference
Biography-Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Jacobs
Photos-Marc Jacobs
http://www.marcjacorbs.com/