Massey students selected for awards

Work by Aihua Wei. Model is Monica Buchan-Ng

Work by Greer Sharrock-Osborne.

Work by Lucy Mcintosh. Model was Jessica Duxfield, makeup by Kerry Taylor

Work by Marie Kelly. Model is Nick van Halderen.

Four Massey University fashion students have been selected as finalists in the iD International Emerging Designer Awards.

The question is, will one win the supreme award, which for the past three years has been whisked overseas by students from Croatia, Israel and London?

The Dunedin awards, in their seventh year, have become an important event on the international fashion awards calendar.

This year’s awards, to be held on April 7, have attracted 120 entries from 20 countries, representing some of the most prestigious fashion schools in the world. Thirty-one finalists from nine countries have been selected.

The contenders from Wellington  Marie Kelly, 22, Lucy McIntosh, 22, Greer Sharrock Osborne, 21, and Aihua Wei, 32  will each show a capsule collection.

Kelly says she decided to enter to test her strengths on an international scale, and to expose her collection, Look Into My Eyes, which she designed for her final-year collection at Massey, based on her experiences with depression.

“Depression can take hold of anyone, even the strongest people,” Kelly says.

“It alters the way we think, feel and act, stripping away all the control we may have once had.”

The focus of this collection is to raise awareness of its effect on people and express the feelings of those who suffer from the illness.

“I believe that textures and clothing can act as a medium for expressing and embodying depression,” Kelly says.

“I aim to use this collection to speak for those who cannot voice their own pain, the pain that I, personally, have had to suppress for so long.”

Inspirational Expansion of an Addiction is the title of Sharrock Osborne’s collection, inspired by her love of things indigenous and spiritual, and referencing Native Americans.

“Initially, I explored the culture as a whole and then shifted to a purely aesthetic-based exploration, this way of shifting the idea was to send me off the most obvious track and open the way to explore an aspect less obvious,” she says.

“Through this study, I learned how easy it was to be culturally insensitive and how hard it is to use a culture’s heritage that I am not part of.

“I found that by taking what I wanted and needed from the culture and moving the original context in such a way that my motivation has shifted and became completely ambiguous. By seeing it objectively and designing from what has developed, it has pushed the concept and displaced it from the original context.”

Wei studied at Massey University after coming to New Zealand from China nine years ago.

Her collection, Transposed, reflects how she developed in adopting a new culture.

“Hussein Chalayan is one of the main influences who inspired me with the notion that I could also turn my life experiences into something creative, showing my own level of honesty in a context that speaks of what I want to express,” Wei says.

Wei put herself forward to enter the competition because some of her tutors pushed her. She promised them she would do it.

“After giving it some thought, I realised that this could be an incredible springboard for my future career,” says Wei.

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