Love Always, 

Misha XO

I originally thought of doing one post before even reaching NY, however after seeing and exploring so much, I decided to go ahead with a breakdown of posts. This is one is dedicated to Midtown Manhattan (roughly).

This post in general will end up being the longest of my New York series, due to our hotel being in Midtown Manhattan, therefore meant we spent most of our days in its comfort. 

We were staying at Hotel Wolcott, which was situated in the ease of Times Square being a 5 minute walk away, streets behind the Empire State building and about a minute from the nearest subway station (making it super easy on our days away from Midtown).



There's nothing that screams "TOURISTS!" than the streets that surrounded us, gift shops were not hard to spot and Manhattan Mall called for easy shopping sprees or just a quick look around the, not hard to miss, Macy's - hello free WiFi. 

Times Square, is exactly how you imagine it... the biggest throw up of advertising around (sorry Piccadilly Circus, not quite). It's so much to take in, it fascinates you just how much is going around you, the advertising, to the street performers and shops. The sense of a good overwhelming feeling is hard to come by, but Times Square will not fail to deliver. On our first day we walked down during the day and took in the concrete jungles that surrounded us and the streets and avenues that went on for miles. We soon learnt to appreciate every Starbucks, about meters from each other, due to the quick breakfasts, but WiFi to help navigate around, as well as posting the aesthetics of NY to the gram - the priority still exists, wherever you are in the world in this day and age.

We took the standard Times Square snaps, but they do not do it justice at all. From TV and Cinema screens seeing it all in reality is so surreal, the smallest details of a yellow cab even, it all felt like a dream. Whilst in the process of coming to terms and comprehending the fact we were in New York, we headed to Forever 21 to "look around" (promise that was our initial intention) and Sephora ( bye bye spending money). It was one of the coldest days, but that did not put a hold on searching for a little pizza place to sum up our day. I promise you, these pizza's are to die for! - Little Italy was our favourites.

I say "sum up our day", but we ventured into Brooklyn that evening for a reason that I will go into more detail with in an upcoming post. 

So, New York, means a lot of walking and I did not let that come in the way of finding a 'Carlo's Bakery'. Growing up, me and my dad would watch the 'Cake Boss' series all the time and I just had to try a cannolli. Not far from Times Square, is were one is situated and it was so worth it, I'm still craving another one. We spoke to a lady in there who said the queue for the bakery during holidays can be so long and I'm definitely not surprised as to why.

I do feel like a lot of New York feels like you're living out movies and television shows in person, due to its vast use and exposure in the media. One of my favourite moments was our visit to Grand Central, hitting me with that throwback to the first episode of Gossip Girl. Despite being a subway station, in comparison to the tubes here in my hometown London, it was similar but also a different vibe all together. So some tube stations do have a few restaurants here and there, but a balcony with open aired cuisines vary far from your little sandwich shop serving some PG Tips.

Altering our mindsets to being fashion students, on our walk to our favourite pizza place (easiest way to keep yourself fed in New York, you have our word), we stumbled across parts of the Fashion Walk of Fame, coming across Calvin Klein's, who I absolutely adore, as well as Ralph Lauren's who I worked for. This walk of fame runs from Chelsea/ The Garment District, speaking of which...





We were all allocated a tour of The Garment District, so two days into the big city, we met bloggers, flower makers and a jewellery brand owner. This tour was an insight into the concrete jungles of Chelsea and opened our eyes to what goes on within the industry here in the streets of the district. We were fuelled with inspo from bloggers with their words of encouragement to keep going with our blogs and seeing it as a platform to just let our thoughts out. We also had our eyes opened to the little details of the bigger picture through the handcrafted flower - family run - company, which have had the opportunity to work with the likes of Victoria's Secret. I also cannot miss out running around the famous fabric store MOOD which has made appearances on Project Runway and for all my Gossip Girl lovers, it should ring a bell.



Midtown Manhattan was our comfort, despite how busy it can be, thats what I like being a city girl.

It's true when they say that the city never sleeps...

I'll be posting some more on the Big Apple in the coming weeks, keep an eye out.

Love Always, 

Misha XO 

We sat down and came together with 5 key words that we thought best described McDean's series work. This allowed us to grasp a clear focus on what ideas, moods and feelings we would chose to express through our images. Therefore, this insured we portrayed a sense of his work in ours through having these keywords to reflect and reference back against.

Overall we had an eye for the detail held in McDeans images of Roses and Sportswear. Upon our own research, we found that all of the production staff for the images, including McDean, were British. Due to obtaining this information, we decided to give the images a British touch through our floral choices of a 'English Rose' aspect and a British brand choice of 'Reebok'. 

Despite being told that the images did not have to have a clear focus on a model, upon evaluating the "Game, Set, MATCH" series, a clear figure was present. Therefore we decide to incorporate a model, but still centralised the shoes in order for them to still hold a place within the emphasis of the image. 

In regards to styling, we kept outfits plain to avoid overshadowing the object focus of the shoes, ranging from neutrals to plain darks, where we tried to avoid blacks due to it being more of a harsher hue - Navy worked well with the backdrops and the shoe, where it kept the image as a whole, in sync. This is due to the colour being incorporated in all of the above. Styling, facially, was kept plain and within the post-production process a fade was added, in order to add a slight wash out and contrast to the colours of the shoes and wallpaper. This helped to emphasis on the true focus of the images (being the shoe), as well as holding references to the "Game, Set, MATCH" images, where the contrast of the washed out model is used to emphasis on the colours of objects.

We also created one image, with the same background and props, of the shoes only. We went ahead with this approach to present a full focus on the branding and apply our creative inspiration from Craig McDean in our own way; without a model. 

As a team, we used the help of props and styling to achieve a clear perspective of the work published by Craig McDean, in order to lower time spent during post-production. This allowed us to be more hands on with our creativity and allowed our ideas to be bought to life, which allowed a sense of "realism" to be conveyed more.

With joint creativity and trial and error methods of our test shoot, as a team we figured out what worked to really bring out the creative concept behind Craig McDeans "Game,Set, MATCH", as well as our object focus of shoes. In the future, as a point of improvement, I believe we may have been able to juxtapose the realsim of the image, to illusions such as 'holes in the ground' to take more out of our inspiration from McDeans work further.

Overall, I loved this brief because as a team it allowed all of our strengths to combine. Therefore lead to create the perfect idea with the balance of interpretation of McDeans work and individual touches of creativity, in regards to the presentation of our object. 

I'm enjoying Uni very much and this module as a whole has proven this is the perfect course for me, here's to what's to come... hint hint: NEW YORK CITY. - Stay tuned for a blogpost coming soon on my travels.

Love Always,

Misha XO

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Hey Everyone,

As September has come to a close and we are already half way through October, I thought this was the perfect time to sit down and update you on where life stands as of now. 

I've just started University in Nottingham (NTU) where I've begun to study Fashion Communication and Promotion. This particular subject area has always been of interest to me and I was always certain, from a young age, that my creativity and love for fashion definitely was a pathway I would like to pursue on at University. 

Nottingham itself is a very creative city which consists of vintage shops to theatres to boutiques to museums and galleries, all of which are a great source of inspiration. Therefore it academically held a great advantage to study Fashion in a City fuelled with varied inspiration outlets. It also holds a great social atmosphere, which you definitely need at university to enjoy your time there and be happy and comfortable with your atmosphere. 

Freshers was definitely a bunch of crazy nights full of bonding with your fellow peers within your accommodation and really beginning to feel at home. After that came societies and without a doubt, one that I joined was The Fashion Society. All the events/societies and clubs you interact with after freshers is definitely where you begin to branch out from your accommodation friends and find those who love the same things as you! Before you know it you have various circles of friendship groups, all that have a different impact on your life at university. 

However, after all the 'no sleep' days (which, by the way, feel like they are still never ending) came waking up for 9am's ...

They do say that the best thing to do in life is what you enjoy and that is exactly what I've chosen to do. I feel as if my project briefs and research are all things I would consider to carry out in my free time; everything I love to do, day to day, is what I'm being set to do within my course. Therefore, it does truly speak for itself, that this course was the best decision I could've decided upon.

Now, university life itself is very different from a standard day in school/college. It feels almost like lectures and seminars are rather full of conversations with people who share the same passions, rather than just being told a bunch of "information", it really does feel like talking to a bunch of friends. 

The ease of settling in due to this really does fuel you up on excitement for the next 3 years of your life, as they truly will be full of experiences and opportunities I will love. 

From travelling to sharing my creativity with you guys, I will definitely keep you updated and more of an insight into the content of my course on further blogposts to come! 

Love Always,

Misha xo