Research 2

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After looking at the websites that my friend reccomended that i did i found some interesting styles and pattersn, websites such as iorn fist where extremly interesting as they have things called "look books" which are a series of photos of models completely done up in the clothing.

Iorn fist in particular was helpfull as they fetaured allot of mens clothing aswell as female, in the look book and on the website, its given me a better variety for the male character and actually given me a better basis for design than just the origonal styles of elvis and jhonny cash which where very similar and bland, rockabilly men in the modern age tend to be allot more eccentric and care more about their appearence.

These are a series of images taken from iorn fists look books, they will serve as part of a kind of mood board i do not own these images they are taken from http://www.ironfist.co.uk/lookbook:

The clothes are a more eccentric from iron fist usig the origional rockabilly styling and putting their own modern twist upon it, its a very popular brand of clothing for the alternative culture i have been looking into and is still revelant, i may use some of the more eccentric styles in the male to make him stand out more and not be overshadowed by the woman who in this sub culture are the more predominant steriotype.

Pinupgirlclothing.com have taken a more traditional look upon the rockabily style keeping to its origional style staples and tailoring it more towards "curvy" more voluptuous women, the mens clothing is very sparse and adheres to the problems i was having previously of the clothing being too simple and similar to make an individual character. the following images are owned by pinupgirlclothing.com and are bing used like the iron fist ones for mood board refference.

the mens clothing seen here http://www.pinupgirlclothing.com/vintage-style-inspired-clothing/giftsforguys.html is a good example of the traditional rockabily style, showing aswell how limited it is.

womens can be seen here: http://www.pinupgirlclothing.com/vintage-style-inspired-clothing/retrodresses.html

the website has protection on the images, not allowing them to be taken off the website, so i havent incase it causes a rection from them, but if you look on the womes the clothing is very figure hugging and is usualy teamed the the lingere to create this hour glass figure which is the desitred shape of a woman who wears this style of clothing, the clothing has a nice vintage feel to it and is revelaing without actually being revealing focusing more on a slight bit of cleavage and figure hugging, rater than little clothing, its what is considered a more classy way of dressing pin up.

Soho as i found out is just a sort of department store which stocks the other brands such as hell bunny and banned, banned dont really have much on tehir website as you have to become a member with a fee as far as i know, im not willing to pay it so i looked at them through attitudeclothing.com and soho.com.

Banned and hellbunny only clothing for women and the clothing features allot of casual wearable designs for everyday use featuring allot of polka dot and leapoard print.

above: banned clothing
below: hell bunny

 

research 1

I decided to begin with the female characters research.

I am quite lucky to have female friends that adhere to the style and fashions that i am researching, they allowed me to look at their tattoo's closely, they showed me clothing that they wear that they themselves would consider steriotypically "Pin up/Rockabilly". i dont however know how they would feel about photographs of their clothes and body art, piercings etc being posted up in a blog which is why no visual research is included here. i notiched while talking to them and being given the help they did that a few similarities that they joke about started to become more apparent:

•  the girls all had dyed hair in one shape or another, Carys has brown hair with flashes of green intertwining through out it, ashleigh changes her hair quite oftern but at the time was sporting lilac and pink hair, Sarah D had an underlayer of purple fading into pink, Sarah H has bleached flashes in her hair that she changes as she pleases at the time it was turquoise, red, pink, blue, green and purple, Nicci has platinum blonde hair with a few flashes of blue on one side and Emma dyes her blonde hair black and is the most steriotypical Pin up girl (which is not an insult she dosent mind people saying it) she stands out as she has the Betty page style fringe and usually wears fire red lipstick.

• the eye makeup stands out quite allot, most of the time (because all the time is incorrect every girl has their lazy days) the girls wear dark eye makeup, some wear the winged eye make up done with pencil or liquid, some wear just khol eyepencil that they smudge to do the smokey rock look and one or two like to change it up with a bit of coloured eyeliner.

• the prints on the clothing were quite a stand out, my friends are deffinately not afreaid of colour, polka dots, love hearts, check or plaid, stripes and Kistch style prints (owls, swallows, tattoo prints) all the clothes my friends wear all give the illusion of a curvy frame, ashleigh who is naturally slim tends to wear high waisted skirts and simple tops tucked in to accentuate and make the most of her shape, the curvy hourglas shape seems to be a popular style choice in the fashion scene as most underwear my friends speak about and call "staples" give the illusion of a tiny waist and well formed hips.

• the hair accessorys seem to all keep allot of similarities bandannas and hair peices seem to be the most common, my friends mostly have a nose piercing there bottom lobes and top eat and mone of two have dabbled in septum piercings and lip piercings but no longer have them except Emma who has a monroe piercing (top lip tot he side to give the illusion ofmaralin monroes beauty spot) 

The girls then gave me a list of clothing brands to look into that specilise in this style of clothing acessory and footwear to look at:

• Iorn fist
• Hell bunny
• Pinupgirlclothing.com
•  Soho
• Banned

I still need to speak to my friend who is a tattoo artist (or even bug my own when i am next under the needle) to find out how tattoos age and react on the skin so the ones on my models wont look like stamps.