Foure is a luxury streetwear brand,  

Originated In Manchester, United Kingdom. 

Established IN 2015.

Within the last five years, the streetwear style was adopted by Hip Hop culture, which elevated its image through limited edition products with high prices. This was an example of who ever has the political power, sets the trends.

This prompted an idea to produce a brand which was inspired by the Hip Hop culture, but that differed in that the items would be of better quality at an affordable price range for a young target audience.

The research into branding for the dissertation helped to achieve an understanding of what is needed to create a successful brand.

This raised awareness of the importance of marketing through appropriate brand creation and brand identity in order to encourage loyalty amongst the target audience.

The ‘Foure’ logo was created using the typeface ‘Gotham’. This design decision was made a ‘Gotham’ is a well respected typeface within the fashion industry as it is well known for being the typeface for ‘GQ’, which links with the brand ‘Foure’ as the magazine ‘GQ’ is known for luxury items and clothing.

The typeface has a simple, bold and luxury aesthetic which will work well with the aesthetics of the brands products.

The name ‘Foure’ comes with the concept that is can be used as the word 'for', also adding another small USP to the brand.

For the essential range, the ‘foure / for’ concept will be used throughout.

White items will be named ‘Foure Day’.
Grey items will be named ‘Foure Dusk’.
Black items will be named ‘Foure Night’.  

‘Foure Men’ and ‘Foure Women’ will also be used on the website to continue this concept.

Off white, brown and olive have also been chosen for possible colours within 2015/16 and these colours have been proven popular colours at the moment.

Aa ‘Foure’ is Branded as a ‘luxury streetwear brand’, the photographs used for the website and promotion all need to be of high quality. Therefore the 'Foure website' will be made with a simple aesthetic to allow the use of high quality images at a the largest scale possible.

The website would only be used to show lookbooks and sell products, therefore having a simple website, rather than a 'creative' website would not have any negative effects on the company.

Practical Plan. Inc time plan


First:
Brand guidelines

What would influence my decisions? 
Chapter One of my dissertation - 'What makes a brand?'

What would this include?
Brand name
Brand logo / logos
Brand clothing inspiration
Brand unique selling point inspiration
Essential (t-shirt) sample
Essential (clothing) colour range
Website & App homepage mockup
Clothing packaging mockup

When would this take place?
November - early December.

Second:
Photoshoot with essential sample t-shirt

What would influence my decisions? 
Chapter Two of my dissertation - 'Hip Hop culture being the highest political power within modern streetwear fashion.'

What would this include?
Photoshoot with luxury cars
Photoshoot with luxury products e.g. shoes, watches and alcohol

Where would this take place?
London for luxury cars
Leeds for product photos

When would this take place?
27-29th December.

Third:
Luxury packaging

What would influence my decisions? 
Chapter Two of my dissertation - 'Hip hop. Turning streetwear fashion into a Luxury product.'

What would this include?
Luxury packaging design
Inner packaging designs


Fourth:
Branding publication

What would influence my decisions? 
Chapter One and Two of my dissertation - 'Branding & Luxury products.'

What would this include?
A binded publication
Finished branding
Photoshoots

Where would this take place?
LCA Digital print
LCA binding (By hand)

When would this take place?
6th January.

Dissertation title - To what extent are street wear brands reliant on advertising and promotion through social media?

As the streetwear brand ‘FOURE’ is due to be released for the Spring/Summer 2016 season, from information gained from research, it would be ideal create the branding for the company and promote it through the social media sites of Instagram or Facebook.

The research into branding for the dissertation helped to achieve an understanding of what is needed to create a successful brand. This raised awareness of the importance of marketing through appropriate brand creation and brand identity in order to encourage loyalty amongst the target audience.

It was found that a unique selling point also needed to be created to establish product preference. This gave inspiration regarding creating practical work, using brand guidelines.

From research it was found that streetwear originated from West Coast skate boarders and surfboarders. This culture gave streetwear a casual aesthetic which is acknowledged as fashionable.

Within the last five years, the streetwear style was adopted by Hip Hop culture, which elevated its image through limited edition products with high prices. This was an example of whoever has the political power, sets the trends.

This prompted an idea to produce a brand which was inspired by the Hip Hop culture, but that differed in that the items would be of better quality at an affordable price range for a young target audience.

Firstly, the full brand guidelines will be created for the company, as research showed that this was the initial stage of branding, in order to decide if the marketing would attract the target audience. These guidelines would then be created into a publication so the brand has a physical copy.

The visual brand identity was created with the logo, which was then produced on a sample t-shirt, which would be appropriate for an ‘essentials’ range. These t-shirts would be manufactured from a company in the United Kingdom for higher quality products.

The first photoshoot for this project was for promotion through the social media platform Instagram, as research for the dissertation had identified this to be the most successful modern method of promotion for streetwear brands. This is because both Instagram and streetwear have the same age range within their main target audience.

The photoshoot reflected the luxury lifestyle, similar to the Hip Hop culture. Therefore photographs were taken of luxury products and luxury cars within a street context. These images would add luxury status to the product, as the audience would associate the clothing with someone who could own the luxury cars.

To further the luxury aesthetic of the brand, luxury packaging in the form of boxes will be created. Other luxury items such as watches, glasses and shoes inspire this idea. The box gives the products a feel of greater value, as well as greater customer satisfaction.

The research for the dissertation will also continue into extended practice, as the first collection (Spring/Summer 2016) of ‘Foure’ will be, developed, produced and released as a brief.

Using all the research from both the dissertation and the practical, a publication will be made with the topic of ‘How to start a streetwear brand’ as a separate brief. Following this, many other fashion briefs will also take place, for example a high end fashion brief collaboration with Mo Mitchell, as well as a Fashion website re-design brief. This will all be influenced by the research gathered from the dissertation and the practical elements produced.

Initial idea

The initial idea for the practical of OUGD601, is the creation on a publication titles… 'How to start a street wear brand.'

This publication will be influenced by the street wear and trends research gathered for my dissertation.

Change and why?

After a 1 to 1 tutor with Amber, I have decided to change my practical to branding my own street wear company.

This decision was made because the publication could not be influenced by branding  and social media, which were massive parts of my dissertation research.

The publication 'How to start a street wear brand', will not be disregarded, as I will complete this brief in extended practice instead. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3092913/The-rise-Insta-millionaire-Fashion-blogger-reveals-earns-15-000-just-posting-ONE-sponsored-Instagram-picture.html

By CATHERINE TOWNSEND FOR DAILYMAIL.COMPUBLISHED: 19:52, 22 May 2015 | UPDATED: 21:34, 22 May 2015

"Danielle Bernstein, 22, runs the blog We Wore What, and has 992,000 followers on her Instagram. Currently, her rate card sets the cost of a single piece of sponsored content from $5,000 to $15,000, but she explained to Harper's Bazaar that this rate can go up or down depending on the number of posts a brand requires, and length of her relationship with the company in question."

Miss Bernstein explains that the range for Instagram accounts with a few hundred thousand followers is from around $500 to $5,000 per post, but accounts with upwards of six million followers can earn anywhere between $20,000 and $100,000 a shot.


Townsend, Catherine. "Blogger Reveals Why She Gets Paid $15,000 Per Instagram Post". Mail Online. N.p., 2015. Web. 14 Dec. 2015.

(Townsend, 2015)

https://www.weconnectfashion.com/articles/usa-streetwear-market-research-report-2015

Streetwear (which, at first, inspired high-fashion) is now inspired by high-fashion. And, high fashion is more than happy to take a bite out of the streetwear market. Because of this, stores are investing in streetwear in a new way. Harvey Nichols, an international luxury lifestyle store in London, now boasts that 63% of its contemporary menswear is steetwear.

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Cars and Clothing: Understanding Fashion Trends

William H. Reynolds
Journal of Marketing
Vol. 32, No. 3 (Jul., 1968), pp. 44-49
Published by: American Marketing Association

The Detection or Fashion Trends

Contrary to what one might think, it is extraordinarily easy to detect fashion trends. For instance. in recent years it has been obvious to everyone, even to junior high school girls no more than 13 years old, that skirts were becoming shorter. Detecting the existence of this trends required no more than an intuitive plotting of points on a line. Only a few points were neceeearv to plot a line showing the direction of the fashion trend.Sometimes, of course, difficulties can be encountered in plotting fashion trend lines. what kinds of measures, for Instance, should be used in sketching the trend toward the increasing use of pop and op (and psychedelic) nrt in advertising? One answer would he to count inches of print advertising using these vlsua! devices. trow many ads in the current issue of a populnr magazine show t.he influence of pop art? How many in the previous issue'!One reason why this works is that fashion is necessarily pubf.ie.A secret fashion is a contradiction in terms. A designer hoping to sbut a new fashion may, of course, try to keep his designs under cover until they are launched. This is a r-isky practice, however, since a new fashion usually requires some kind of. CQn­ certed eff'ort from a number of designers. The midiskirt-whieh reaches midway between the knee and ankle--wHl not catch on until several firms have taken up the idea. Finns in fashion in­ dustries thus (a) try to find out what their competltors are doing and (b) sometimes deliberately "leak" information 011 their Own plans in the hope that competitors will follow them. It is n rare fashion which is a surprise to the people in II. certain field. (Page 44)