Rick Owens

London Trip, Brand Research

 

When we first came across the shop on South Audley Street it reflected the complete minimalist personality of the Rick Owens Brand. The simplicity of the store and the Black and White aesthetic was shown throughout. 

Unfortunately when enquiring about the brand in store, the staff were quite dismissive of us as students and wouldn't reveal any background or present information on the brand or allow us to use any photography inside. However, despite initially feeling as though this was a hinderance we actually found it useful when thinking about what we could do for our new creative idea.

Luckily we visited the Rick Owen's concessions section in Selfridges on Oxford Street offered us some more insight on the brand and allowed us to take photos. 

In a nutshell, our primary research consisted of:

- Rick Owens was born in 1962 in California

- He began his career as a pattern cutter, therefore being skilled and aware of fabric quality. He then went on to work for a fur company where he met his wife Michelle Lame who became his muse and designer of his clothes

- His brand started off as an underground brand, it then became more of a niche, leading it onto the catwalk as a couture brand

- His clothes were first seen at Paris fashion week where Kate Moss wore one of his jackets!

Collections

Rick Owens has 3 types of collections:

Dark Shadow

This brand is the cheapest of the 3, but by all means is not cheap. It uses less leather and expensive fabrics and more denim. It is not as luxurious and more casual.

Lily's

This collection is more mid market within the luxury hughstreet and consists of Rick Owens knitwear collections.

Mainline Rick Owens

This is the most expensive and luxurious of the 3, it is couture, the types of clothes that would be seen on the catwalk shows and worn by the more Avant Garde.

As you can see from the pictures, the 3 collections are easily recognisable from their tagging, of which also follows the same suit in standard of the collection.

Creative ideas for the future of Rick Owens are to come...

Love Livy x

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Brand Communication

Creating the Brief 

During todays lecture we watched a section from a film called 'The Lovers Guide to Brand Persuasion' we took notes on Chapter 4 - Creating the Brief/Inspire the Briefing. 

The first point that interested me was that a brief should be tight, only 1 page or so, not lengthy - clever and simple. The brief should reflect the truth about the product, however not be so logical in its ideas for creativity. What the product does and what does it say to the consumer! 

"A good brief is more like a spring board than a straight jacket" - it needs to be fresh, inventive and individual. 

For example the Guiness advert focusing around the fact it takes 119.5 seconds to pour a guiness pint - therefore good things come to those who wait. It play on the kinds of things you can do while waiting for your pint to be poured (but not just going to the loo or making a sandwich, the more extraordinary things, the things that you COULD do) 

Ideas

After the brief has been created Ideas then need to be capsulated in order to start the creative ball rolling. They should capture the human imagination, and still be believable as well as extraordinary. It needs to be able to feel like a product of tomorrow rather than yesterday, with a sense of purpose. What are the needs of that brand, what does it want to create, what is it trying to communicate! 

There needs to be powerful ideas that deliver! Never believe that the idea can't get any better, as there is always room for it to become better and stronger. 

In business you need to be an optimist.

The Execution of the Idea

Anything from Pomotion, Advertising, Events. Taking the idea and bringing it to life!

Speed is needed within this process as time tends to kill a good idea - context changes, the world that we live in and what we expect from it changes, new ideas are being made and promoted everyday, you need to get in there before the next person does!

Flexibility about which ways you what to capture that idea and the types of shots, designs or films you want to do, need to be able to have some leeway. However try to change as little of the actual idea as possible, only change what really needs to be changed. Try ad-libbing some bits and see what comes naturally, what is created in that moment. For example this Nike advert idea was never what was actually planned, the creators saw Tiger Woods messing around doing this trick on the side lines when he was bored and so they shot it and it become the main focus of the idea instead.

You have to be in charge of your idea, at this point it can be hard for the Client to let go of the idea and leave the Agency to it, however it can be hard having them looking over you at every point, they need to leave you to relax and get on with it.

Timeline

- Client creates the brief

- Agencies receive the brief

- Agencies cultivate and create ideas

- Agencies choose one idea and stick to it

- Clients receive the idea from the agencies and then choose to accept or decline the idea

- If accepted the idea cannot be changed, the client then leaves it down to the agency and their team to bring the idea to life!

Love Livy x

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