The story of an intern || Annah Hughes

The second in our 'tale of an intern' style feature focuses on one of our current interns Annah Hughes who is about to enter her 3rd year of 'Textiles in Practice' at Manchester School of Art. We snapped this little cheeky monkey behind the scenes whilst she helped to art direct the new 'Say What' lookook photoshoot.

A N N A H ' S    S T O R Y

'Collaborating with Rianna and her fashion label on the AW2015-16 collection lookbook photoshoot has been an exciting experience and when Rianna gave us the brief, my group and myself were extremely excited at the prospect of working closely with an established designer. During a project titled 'unit X', the university invite existing design companies to come into the Art School and set up collaborative projects, enabling students to gain experience within the industry whilst also studying at uni. We were really excited to hear one of these opportunities was to help create & art direct Rianna's lookbook! Around 8 groups in total created concepts for Rianna's campaign but only 1 groups concept could be chosen for the final photoshoot.

 

We started by brain storming lookbook ideas and many Starbucks mochas later we decided upon creating an innovative virtual platform; a short film for her site, directed by fellow intern Amber Phillips and a digital friendly lookbook which could easily be viewed on her website but also print out beautifully as a hard copy.

By using social media platforms such as Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram we researched the current market whilst working closely with Rianna and regularly had meetings to discuss our mood board concepts. This lead us to the first test shoot which was an extremely exciting yet challenging prospect, we all knew what we wanted to achieve but it was quite an experimental process. We presented our final test shoot ideas in front of Rianna & all the other contending groups from Manchester School of Art. Winning the pitch was amazing and we were so excited to put our test shoot ideas into a live commercial brand. Working with Rianna on the day of the shoot was really fun and exciting. We were able to have free reign on art direction and the styling of the shoot. I really enjoyed the preparation that went into styling the models look. We opted for a minimalistic look that let the prints do all the talking. Silky soft culottes were pieced with layered mesh tops and the jewellery was inspired by the looks our favourite fashion bloggers wear.

It's been a really fun and eye opening experience working and connecting with everyone on set. Although the photo-shoot only took a few hours there was a big team to coordinate. We had to be sure everyone understood the vision we wanted to portray, therefore inspiration boards were created and shared with the make-up artist, photographer, model and lighting crew. Studying 'Textiles in Practice' at Manchester School Of Art has completely changed my outlook on art, fashion and design industry. It has taught me that there are numerous directions and opportunities within fashion to pursue. I specialise in print for fashion however working on an art directed lookbook enabled me to experience different aspects of the fashion industry and how I could potentially develop my own practice within art direction & styling. For my final year at the Art School I want to produce a unique collection of contemporary prints. Focusing on creating an abstract and playful concept within fashion and editing these ideas within a styling context.'

View the full lookbook created by the students here:
www.riannaphillips.com/page/lookbook-saywhat

 Take a look at Annah's work:

Carbon Made 

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