Category: Fashion

Animation

Dr. Martens’ Poetry in Motion

By Delphine Hirasuna |

When Dr. Martens celebrated its 50th anniversary, its agency, Exposure Communications, decided to launch a website featuring 10 contemporary artists interpreting 10 alternative music tracks from the past 50 years. Vanessa Marzaroli from the Los Angeles -based multimedia design studio, Blind, was asked to create the music video for “Lilac Wine” by the Cinematic Orchestra. Marzaroli captured the “sweet and heady” lyrics in the delicate, fluid lines of Spencerian calligraphy – a perfect melding of music and images.

Advertising

LaLan Intimate Apparel Dance

By Delphine Hirasuna |

This Japanese television commercial for Wacoal LaLan bras is a fascinating departure from the usual approach to selling intimate apparel in Western cultures. No sultry bedroom eyes, no come-hither looks, no languorous poses. Victoria’s Secret models they are not. The contrast is stark between the lingerie ads in the U.S. that imply that the right underwear will make you sexy and desirable, and this Japanese ad featuring young women doing a surreal and zany dance. What’s even more interesting is that Wacoal, a company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan, employs the sexy underwear strategy in ads that it runs in many other countries.

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Packaging

Coke Appeals to Fashion

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Of course, every brand wants to suggest that its product is the rage among trend-setting consumers. But Coca-Cola is doing more than just suggesting that it is fashionable to drink its product; it is linking its brand to the world’s top fashion designers and putting its name on beauty products too.

Last fall Coca-Cola Light and eight renowned Italian fashion designers — Donatella Versace, Alberta Ferretti, Anna Molinari for Blumarine, Veronic Etro, Silvia Venturini for Fendi, Consuelo Castiglioni for Marni, Angela Missoni and Rossella Jardini for Moschino — teamed up to present specially decorated contoured bottles for the opening of Milan Fashion Week. Showcased at a Coca-Cola Light “Tribute to Fashion” runway event, the original bottles were later auctioned by Sotheby’s with proceeds going to aid the victims of the devastating 2009 earthquake in Abruzzo, Italy. Collectible bottles were also produced in limited edition and sold in Europe. Some are even finding their way onto eBay.

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Visual Merchandising

Hermes Window Display: Poetry in Motion

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Tokujin Yoshioka, who created shop designs and installations for fashion designer Issey Miyake for 20 years before starting his own studio in 2000, communicated the essence of the Hermes brand with utmost simplicity in this window display for Maison Hermes in Tokyo. Only two props filled the display area – a black-and-white image of a beautiful woman projected onto a monitor and a hanging Hermes scarf. Each time the woman appeared to blow gently on the colorful scarf, it swayed in response. Ethereal, poetic and uncontrived, the scene is devoid of anything that would detract from appreciating the ultra-silky elegance of the scarf.

Packaging

Evian: Mastering the Art of French Water

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Evian

Want to set an elegant table for the holidays? Don’t just put any old bottled water out for guests. Make it French. Make it designer. Make it from the Evian Paul Smith Limited Edition collection. In a tradition started in 2008 with a limited edition bottle designed by Christian Lacroix, followed in 2009 with Jean Paul Gaultier, Evian has just released the Paul Smith Limited Edition 2010 bottle.

The renowned British fashion icon designed the bottle in vibrant colors with a festive theme, featuring his signature stripes and five different multi-colored caps to collect. These days selling bottled water has become harder with countless brands vying for market share and sustainability proponents urging people to drink water filtered from the tap, even adding the bubbly themselves. With its designer bottles, Evian, owned by Danone Waters of America, isn’t touting how its product tastes, but how its bottles look. At $13.95 (USD) for a single 750ml bottle and $118 (USD) for a 12-bottle case, what consumers are buying is imaginative packaging that happens to have water inside.

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