Nick Souksavat - SPOOF FINAL

The brand that I am spoofing is TOPSHOP which is a British based clothing retailer that was founded in the mid-1960s. The brand has established itself to be a one stop shop for fashion, offering a wide variety of clothing that spans many styles. Similar to H&M, clients can find just about anything from lax casual to edgy street fashion. The main differences between the two are that TOPSHOP offers its clients supposaed better quality in materials and designs, but with that comes a much steeper price point comparatively. In recent years, a lot of hype has been built around the TOPSHOP brand once it made its bridge to the US.

To spoof the brand, I changed the name to $LOP$HOP. I incorporated $’s to emphasize the high price point and changed the word “top” to “slop” for the fact that if you look at their collection, their general design aesthetic does not compensate for the amount that they charge consumers.

The medium that I’ve chosen to make my print ads with is digital photography. Like any other clothing brand, TOPSHOP relies mainly on print ads to market them. The ads are meant to show off clothing on a model to give clients inspiration on how to make style conscious outfit choices. In terms of composition, I took a very straight forward approach where the model is the main focus with nothing else to really distract the message of the advertisement. In order to keep it interesting, I had my model pose in dynamic shapes to create different pulls to give the entire image balance and life. My personal aesthetic is to highlight some features but keep things sharp and that’s demonstrated through the deliberate posing and color scheme. I used a lighting kit to manipulate the shadows and also to make sure colors were represented properly.

I feel that TOPSHOP was a brand that I am comfortable with addressing because I work in retail, and for many years I’ve been reading fashion magazines and blogs which gives me other insight to compare with my own personal style. My sensibility is often geared towards more minimalist and classic whereas TOPSHOP in my opinion can come off very gaudy/pretentious. Therefore, my investment with the spoof ad is to call attention to the distorted vision of fashion that people have placed on something based on a brand name. I have friends who shop there who often tell me that the actual fabrication of the pieces they purchased doesn’t merit the amount of money they spent on it. Compared to others in the class, I think everyone generally has a good grasp on how to design. The ideas are always flowing and they have a good sense of what’s more effective and what’s not. The only variances that I’ve noticed are execution levels (some people are more versed in design programs) and obviously personal opinions in taste.

In addition to the print ads I composed, I designed a new shopping bag for the spoof as my alternate form of non-conventional marketing. Taking the advice of some classmates, I took the iconic plastic bag that just says “thank you” repeatedly with a small tagline at the bottom for example, “have a nice day!” and modified it to be cohesive with the message I am projecting in my print ad.

I think from a design standpoint, my ads and bag are successful. My main struggle fell into conveying the message through the actual ad because the simplicity of a fashion ad worked to my disadvantage. There wasn’t really room to incorporate a slogan that would help get my point across. Instead I just used pricing to communicate the message.