When given the list of different galleries across the world we could now visit in the comfort of our own home, I was amazed. I think its really good that galleries and museums are still trying to keep that interaction, even when we are unable to physically visit.
I was instantly attracted to the V&A, where I knew there had been an exhibition on Mary Quant, after watching the BBC documentary ‘Secrets of the Museum’. I searched in the V&A catalogue and found a pamphlet from 1967 of fifteen pages of colour and black and white fashion photographs of designs and make up with text by Mary Quant. The cover of the pamphlet was my starting point for my visual mind map.
I love the 60s, with all its fashion and makeup trends, and I’m actually very tempted to ask for some white 60s style knee high boots for my birthday. Just because we’re in isolation doesn’t mean we can’t look good. Therefore, I first looked at 60s fashion in a general sense and Mary Quant’s influence. This brought me to a shoe collection she released, which reminded me of images I’m often recommended on my Pinterest. For some reason, images of colourful tights and legs appear often on my home page on Pinterest, almost like leg editorial images. Don’t know why, but they’re cool, anyway. Twiggy is a 60s icon that always comes to mind, so of course I had to include her. One image I found had her wearing these geometric colourful earrings, which reminded me of Bauhaus and those kinds of shapes. Another image I found is Twiggy with a painted purple flower around one of her eyes. This purple eyeshadow reminded me of Lily Collins’ Met Gala 2019 look, with a 60s inspired graphic eyeliner look. This graphic eyeliner trend has come back in trend, with my Instagram and TikTok being filled with these bright eyeshadow looks. Continuing with makeup, I looked at the Space Age trend of the 60s. this led me to find some interesting images of hats and sunglasses worn in peculiar shapes, which also linked to the Met Gala, with Gigi Hadid’s look. These hats led onto headbands and headscarves of the 60s, which once again, have come back in trend with the bandana of today. Of course, I had to include Flower Power in a Mary Quant/60s visual mindmap, focussing on the floral wallpaper of 60s interiors, and the patterns used on clothing. These bright colours linked back to the images of colourful tights. I really enjoyed this task in letting my mind just wander and put down anything that came to me. Pinterest greatly helped with this, continuously suggesting images that would complement one another. When discussing it in the seminar, Simon instantly saw one of the hats in the top right as something similar to the discs on Selfridges in Birmingham, something I hadn’t thought about before. I think it’s really interesting seeing where someone else’s mind goes when looking at one image. I stuck to the 60s as a general theme and if I was to do this again, I would have branched out further into other realms, with Laura suggesting some painters that related to my image choice I could look into.
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