FREAKS N GEEKS

Gucci is a brand that I certainly have come to love a LOT of the last few years, it hasn't always been a love of mine though... Whilst doing a lil bit of research for our summer brief, I stumbled across this collection released by Gucci back earlier his year.

First off can we just take a mo to appreciate the name: 'Freaks and Geeks' I think I'm already in love!

Following collaborations with photographers Petra Collins and Coco Captian, fashion powerhouse Gucci has now teamed up with illustrator, Angelica Hicks.

"With an Insta bursting with tongue-in-cheek pop culture references including LOL depictions of Kim K and Anna Wintour as you’ve never seen them before – not to mention Gucci going experimental with recent ad campaigns featuring meme’s and aliens – Hicks is perhaps the perfect collaborator for the Italian brand in 2017."

Ms. Hicks is a satirical illustrator with a royal family connection, known for her watercolor-and-ink drawings that poke fun at fashion and pop culture. Her father, Ashley Hicks, is an architect, interior designer and the second cousin of Charles, Prince of Wales. Her mother, Allegra Hicks, is a fashion designer and personality in London.

Ms. Hicks’s drawings have appeared in Elle, Lula and Cabana magazines, with assignments often commissioned on the strength of her Instagram account. On Thanksgiving, for example, she posted a drawing of Grimes dressed as a pilgrim, captioned “Pilgrimes.” Another, captioned “Santa Kors,” depicts the designer Michael Kors as Santa. Her insta is totally worth giving a follow!

Hicks big break came during her senior year at University College London, Ms. Hicks was asked by a family friend (Martina Mondadori of Cabana magazine) to illustrate place cards for a dinner honoring the Italian men’s wear brand Pal Zileri. The deadline was three days after her final exam. “Having to draw 60 portraits in two days really forced me to develop a personal style,” she said. Her cartoonish portraits are distinguished by bold black lines, wide eyes, high cheekbones and droll text. Soon after, she was asked to draw invitations for a Tory Burch party in London. “This is when I realized I’d actually be able to make real money from doing this,” she said.

Illustration have always been something I'm passionate about, it's certainly something I explored myself as a career option. Good illustrations that really catch your eye are hard to come by! Hicks style is the type of thing I would want to put on display in my house, they're almost child like but and the same time they have an adult touch bout them. Personally I love the soft pastel colours with harsh black, thick lines- it just works!

The collaboration manifests in a collection of limited edition tees with diverse illustrations, featuring the likes of ethereal Florence & The Machine front-woman Florence Welch; others see Gucci-fied depictions of freaks and geeks, while each comes in a limited edition metal box, also featuring Hicks’ illustrations.

To celebrate the release of the collection, Hicks took to the streets of Milan and New York to create two marvellous murals. Appearing at Lafayette Street in NYC’s super-cool Soho neighbourhood and Milan’s Largo la Foppa, in the popular Corso Garibaldi area; there’ll even be a special Snapchat geo-tag for when you’re in those areas to make sure your socials are looking double cute. Now these are something I'd love to see! I really hope more brands take on this approach of marketing. Slightly off topic but I've seen a lot of unique promotion around the new 'IT' movie, in Sydney they tied red balloons to drains and stamped the ground saying 'IT coming to cinemas soon', I just thought was a really great way of marketing! I know it would make stop & look at it, because isn't that the whole point of good marketing?

Probably very late to the party with this collaboration and this post may not even be telling you something you didn't already know. If I'm honest it still didn't stop me wanting to blog about it because it just really stood out to me. I don't want to give away what I'm doing for my summer post just yet because I'm still drawing conclusion on it but a post on it will be coming very soon so keep an eye for that. I just thought the promotion around this collaboration was really interesting & not what I'd expected but at the same it worked perfectly. Being a poor student and the fact I've found out about this collaboration too late probably means you won't be seeing me sporting a Gucci X Hicks tee anytime soon. What you will find me doing however will be looking more into how different brands promote new launches- potential new blogging series alert! 

Hope you all enjoyed this post. Thoughts on the collaboration?
Do you think the marketing murals were the right form of promotion for this collab?
I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. 

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Photo Credit: Pinterest. 
Article reference: Wonderland magazine.