Country Road talks us through its collaboration with students from Melbourne's RMIT.
Our CR visual merchandise team mentored a group of RMIT Diploma in Visual Merchandise students over ten weeks to create a window concept for our Melbourne Central store.
The course took students from brief and concept, to design and build. Here, is a snapshot of their experience all the way through to the final beautiful installation.
This week, six talented RMIT visual merchandise students saw their design vision realised as they installed a striking window display at our Melbourne Central store.
The group have been mentored by our CR VM team over the past ten weeks.
At the beginning of the course, the students received a creative brief which outlined that the windows were to have a womenswear and women’s accessories focus, feature May product, and that the designed concept should be in line with the palette, textures and key silhouettes of the season.
Most importantly, our CR team encouraged the students to push the boundaries in all aspects of creative window display and asked that the design should have strong street impact and theatre.
The next step was to respond to the brief with a few possible concepts and lots of sketching and mood boards.
One of the two team leaders, Gabrielle, relished the freedom of the brief:
"The CR team briefed us using words like ‘Luxe Winter Getaway’ and for us we had ideas around a country weekend escape, and then our ideas went towards the countryside and dry herbs hanging from the ceiling.
"At the same time we were also thinking about a strong architecture influenced design – then the two, nature and architecture, merged together.
"The idea then progressed into a more modern setting that felt right for Country Road with the use of a wall of fresh herbs."
After confirming the creative concept it was all about coordinating suppliers, materials, working to dimensions and budgets, creating mock ups of the hanging green wall, and lots of visits to Queen Victoria Markets to source herbs.
After a few experiments, the students discovered the woodier rosemary and bay leaves were the best options, and would be longer lasting.
This concept also created a sensory experience of smelling those amazing herbs upon entering a store.
Team leader Hannah explains: “For us, we thought that was an important element to the brief because you know when you enter a CR store, there is a distinct smell which is intrinsic to the brand.
"Although green walls have been done before we thought incorporating fresh herbs was an interesting way of reinventing that.
"What’s interesting is that what we’ve created won’t stay the same over time – the colours and smells will change, things will drop a little bit. It’s a natural thing.”
For the students it was their first real life project with a brand and one of the greatest benefits was learning and experiencing the fast paced nature of VM: “There’s a lot more pressure working on a real brief.
"That’s what I like about the VM course, it is very hands on and this experience has taught us invaluable lessons with time management and creative control, you need to stick to your ideas and keep moving,” explains Gabrielle.
We are incredibly impressed with the finished result, if you're in Melbourne CBD checkout their carefully considered design – you will be able to see the installation during May.