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By Sandie Foster
Mahurangi College Gateway student
Textile students at Mahurangi College outdid themselves at the Hokonui Fashion Awards in Gore recently.
The awards are described as a competitive platform for all amateur fashion designers to showcase their designs in front of well-regarded industry leaders. Over the previous years the judging panel has included Karen Walker, Nic Blanchet, Francis Hooper, Trelise Cooper and Doris Du Pont.
Young designers from around NZ submit garments in the hope that they might appear on the catwalk and win a prize.
This is the first year that Mahurangi College students have participated, and four out of the five students who entered were awarded a place.
Mahurangi cleaned up in the Collective Design School Streetwear category – Akira Manwaring won first place and $700, Lauren Batley was second winning $300 and Zariah Welch was highly commended.
Year 13 Tara Williams was highly commended in the School Macca Lodge Upcycled section.
School textiles teacher Abbie Thalari said the students did “amazingly well”.
“Students enter themselves – they sail the boat and I just help by giving them feedback on their designs and how to construct them,” she said.
She said that as long as there were keen students, then the school would continue to participate in the awards, and there were some talented designers coming up.
Williams said that the Hokonui Fashion Awards were a really good place for young people to show their work, and it was cheap and accessible to apply.
“It was a really good experience,” she said.
She got her inspiration from the 90s runway and thought that she had learned lessons about time management, planning and experimenting. In the future, she hoped to enter in WOW (the World of Wearable Art) and work in the fashion industry with an emphasis on sustainability.
Runner up Lauren Batley said that it was a good learning experience and participating was a lot of fun.
Like Tara, she thought she could have done better with her time management because she got “a bit rushed” in the end.
She said her design was inspired by photos based on streetwear.
Lauren said it was hard to make her garment because she had to alter patterns to fit her vision of the design, and she had to do a lot of draping and sewing.
Lauren plans to follow a business career path, but is thinking of incorporating fashion with her business degree.
