Last year, our students designed a marketing and advertising campaign for our “cause-based” fashion brand Merit. This included a 60 second commercial and a print ad. Students were challenged to think beyond their own personal interests and create something that speaks to Merit’s brand and its target customers. This year, we created a similar challenge where we invited three special guests (along with two of our FATE staff) and assigned one subject per team. Each team was asked to create an outfit that speaks to who their subject is. The first step was to come up with interview questions for their subject to learn more about their occupation, interests, and life experiences. Based on this interview, each team created a persona for their subject that described their profession and listed a few attributes and personal goals.
The following week, each team was given a stack of magazines to create a mood board for their subject to visually display what they learned about them. These mood boards were then used to inspire the creation of an outfit that had to fit within a $200 budget. Once the outfits arrived, each mannequin was dressed and teams rotated around the room to make observations and inferences about each mannequin’s outfit and how it speaks to who the person it. Finally, each team presented their subject by describing their persona, mood board, and outfit choice in a creative way. One presentation was in a game-show style and another put on a role play / skit. The team that won the presentation decided to embody their subject (a former professional football player) and present their material as sports announcers and football players! It was so fun to see our students thinking outside-of-the-box on how to present material!
