Admittedly, mine and Evie’s communication has lacked over the past week or two. We have both been getting back into the swing of university life since Easter break, as well as spending time working on our own modules. Our call yesterday was very much needed and was successful.
This was a great point in both of our project journeys to touch base with each other. I had just received valuable feedback from my presentation which I wanted to keep Evie in the loop with. As well, Evie has been able to get back into the workshops to experiment physically with materials and really work on her own ideas. Therefore, at this stage, we had a fair bit to run past each other which was exciting.
The first and foremost thing that I wanted to clarify from Evie was the sustainability focus of her project. This was a key point of feedback from my presentation; that the sustainability focus and what Evie’s USP regarding sustainability got a little bit lost. I also wanted to discuss primary and secondary consumer groups with her and see what her views were regarding that. I outlined that the primary consumer would be called ‘The Egocentric’ and their focus is mainly being confident and wearing whatever they want, and that the secondary consumer would be called ‘The Ecocentric’ who has more concern and an emotional connection to the deeper message and the sustainable side of things. My presentation feedback was to maybe consider switching my primary and secondary consumer groups around. It was therefore important that I cleared these things up to be extra confident with my brand development work going forward.
Regarding the sustainability focus, Evie has made her vision more clear. She said she does not envision using sustainability or functionality as a differentiator or as a USP from her brand perspective. Her view is at the end of the day, every brand is trying to be as sustainable as possible. It is almost just expected from brands and is more of a background thing. Sustainability is of course still important for the Fortitude brand because Evie claims that she designs for a lifestyle, but she feels that there does not need to be as much of an emphasis on the matter. Evie has been experimenting with fusing plastic bags and using them as a statement material within her designs. In this way, this is the brand’s environmentally conscious attitude coming into play and it is this spin on sustainability that will allow the brand to stand out. The notion of recycling and using materials such as plastic bags is Fortitude’s environmentally conscious and sustainable stance. Evie is utilising the plastic bags in a way that not only creates an impactful message surrounding plastic ocean, but also using them in an alternative way that means marine life and the oceans will not get damaged as a result of them being used in fashion instead. Subsequently, Fortitude’s main/focal idea behind the brand is ultimately the message that we are trying to portray, over anything else.
Regarding my consumer profiles and the potential confusion behind them, Evie actually really liked my initial thought process. She confidently confirmed that her designs are going to be very statement and out-there, and therefore will be worn by very confident and ‘show-off’ people. She went into further detail regarding her designs and explained that some of her garments are going to be incredibly revealing. It goes back to our first meeting where she envisioned creating underlay garments that explore femininity and then creating other garments to go over the top. It defines that the garment on top is important, but it’s more about what is underneath, which reflects the whole brand’s concept. Consequently, she thought that my primary consumer being the more out going one, and the secondary consumer being more concerned for the environment, made absolute sense and can for sure be justified.
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