Introduction

This project, titled "Goodbye to Berlin", is centred around Berlin in the 1920's and 1930's. Something I was not aware of before this project, is that Berlin was a vibrant city full of sex, debauchery, art, music, theatre, culture and transformation. "Goodbye to Berlin" is a semi autobiographical novel by Christopher Isherwood, and is based around his time spent in Weimar Berlin. Weimar Berlin is something I would definitely like to research a lot more into, as it is obviously critical to this project, but also as i mentioned before, I was totally unaware of this piece of history. I am looking forward to seeing how it compares to today, in terms of debauchery and sexuality. I have always thought of that time in Germany as a time of modesty and suffering. There was a lot of suffering and poverty, so I look forward to seeing how this impacted the Weimar culture. 

Over the course of this project, I will be exploring different hair and makeup looks from the 1930's both for men and women, as well as looking into the history of Weimar Berlin and Weimar culture. It was a time of great extremes. On the one hand there was a lot of openness and freedom in many forms such as sexuality, music, art, literature and performance. On the other hand, it was also a time of desperate poverty and lack. Men and women alike were selling their bodies and possessions just to survive. The term "survive" is used loosely, as money earned was quickly spent on "essentials" for the time; liquor, cigarettes and even narcotics. This was the height of debauchery, and anything was acceptable. I am keen to explore how this came across in hair and makeup styles- both for men and women, and to explore how much it changed as the Hitlers Nazi regime advanced.

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1 http://ozebook.com/nostalgia/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Capture1.jpg 01/10/2014 

2 http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/236x/0b/85/96/0b85968bff04f0300c79b8daad62636a.jpg 01/10/2014

Over the summer, we had to look at colour symbolism, and the use of colour in film; http://leeannsnymanfindandseek.blogspot.co.uk/ . I would like to bear this in mind throughout the project, as I believe it will be necessary as designers to make sure every design choice is informed and deliberate. 

I'm looking forward to this project and learning more about how certain political and economical aspects would have influenced makeup, hair and styling choices. I am most nervous about the character creation and not being able to do justice to the characters, but hopefully with enough information, I'll be able to overcome this!