Practical Issues / Research

To What Extent and by What Means Do Luxury
Fashion Houses use Branding Techniques to Increase 

the Perceived Value of Their Product?

After getting a good way through my essay, I now need to consider the practical response to the project. There are practical issues waiting to be extracted from my essay.

Technique / Relevant Ways to Present an Idea

My essay lends itself to me pursuing the production of a phoney fashion label, playing up to the 'techniques' prevalent in current fashion but emphasising them to breaking point.

This could be executed as a digital or printed look-book or a physical fashion garment collection.

Content

The content will be informed by my extensive research into the ways that the consumer has been trained to respond to certain signs and primal desires to achieve the 'ideal self', which fashion labels have latched onto and continue to take advantage of.

Communication

This idea can be communicated subtly, aiming to be as clever as the marketing agencies. 

Things like class, opulence - theories relating to Simmel's Fashion - are all prevalent and can work from either end of the spectrum. 

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From here: 'Comment on how you will engage with each of these aspects of practice-based research and highlight opportunities for primary research.'

Ideally I'd like to question people high up in the identity design of a fashion company to discover just how much of an identity is consciously trained at the 'ideal self' of the consumer.

I could speak to employees on the shop floor at Harvey Nichols or Whistles to get first hand views on how customers react to the brand and how they appear to want to be perceived. 

I need to target one specific brand which embodies this school of thought that I am nailing down and see how far they extend it across the brand.

I also think a survey between my peers and friends would be appropriate to get more of an idea of how other people my age consider the fashion market and f they are aware of the cynical nature of getting the consumer to buy unrelentingly.

Analysis 

Look in detail at fashion branding.

Exploration

Play with notable correlations and recurrences found in analysis and put this into practice.

Evaluation

Has my reinterpretation of the branding had the same effect or has the effect shifted from me having a different and more sympathetic approach?