3rd Year – Fashion Futures – The Future of Fashion Journalism

Moving into the final year of my degree, the Fashion Futures module was a brilliant opportunity to discover and explore the future possibilities of my chosen career path I wish to progress down after graduation from university. I chose to research into the future of Fashion Journalism, as this is the direction that, over the past three years of university, I had discovered was the direction and field I am very passion about heading down, and an area of the industry in which my more project management, business minded, analytical, and writing and research driven skillset best fit within. The Fashion Futures module also ran in conjunction with our Brand Me, Concept Direction and Development research.    

 

My research centred around discussing the future possibilities for the Journalistic space, as in today’s rapidly developing, technological world, where digital social interaction is overturning human interaction and traditional media practises, the future of Fashion Journalism, and Journalism as a communication practise, looks uncertain. My research led me to discover that with Print Media on the decline and Social Media use and image sharing on the increase, new Artificial Intelligence would be brought into the Journalism space. The project explored the exciting, innovative developments and future possibilities of this everchanging and evolving medium; and highlighted the increasing use of Instagram pages such as Diet Prada and Closet Accounts as news sources, Micro News Organisations which used cookie and algorithm driven data to specifically target news to certain types of people based on their previous searches, and Artificial Intelligence being used to help Journalists generate articles . I included also, discussions about how different generations are reacting to this change, how well readers can trust online journalism, how much we are being blinkered to certain aspects of journalism, fashion based and otherwise,

 

For my project, I was also able to carry out a number of primary interviews, which very much helped me to develop first hand my Journalistic skills, as I practised how to create a strong bank of questions for each interviewee based on my previous knowledge of their Journalism expertise, and learnt how to combine these with my research to help build upon the discussion I was generating. I included interviews from Kate Houghton, the Editor of Living Edge Magazine, Brett Herlingshaw, a second year Journalism student at University of Chester, and Charlie Walden, a first year Journalism Diploma Student at The Sheffield Collage.  These Journalistic skills, and interviewing techniques I learnt, mixed with the research on the future of Fashion Journalism,  again solidified that Journalism, specifically contemporary Journalism within the luxury market is the path I wish to progress down, and pinpointed to me that I wanted to include an interview series as part of my final major project.