Overview
Fashion connoisseurs will know that November in Auckland City is all about the highly anticipated AUT Rookie Fashion Show, where the final year students let loose their blood, sweat and tears in the form of apparel down the runway for the final judgement by media, the fashion industry and general public.
While all the students provided a spectacular taste of their design skills, here are the designers we thought particularly stood out from the show.
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1. Grace Jensen
Grace Jensen's design aesthetic is driven by her love of digital print. Grace created her own collection of textiles inspired by texture and colour, using them in unexpected ways to produce a capsule range that she says echoes her design aesthetic and personal style and with the perfect combination of prints, block colours and neutral tones, the collection is eye-catching yet wearable.
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2. Glen Prentice
For his graduate collection, Glen worked on a concept that explored shape and silhouette through design uniformity, alluding to ideas of consistency and conformity within dress. His concepts which explored cultures, society and movements with attention to the character of textiles, produced a clean and structured collection with just the right amount of femininity.
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3. Vihanga Mahesh Sontam
Greatly influenced by texture and colour, Vihanga's collections showcased a stunning array of hues including raspberry pinks, sunny-bright mustard yellows and a stroke of copper-sulphate blues. Her passion towards natural fabrics was also clear in her designs and limitations in the availability of fabrics had pushed her to create her own textiles through hand weaving techniques which added a uniquely raw aesthetic to the range.
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4. Charlotte Cho
Charlotte explores the fundamental characteristics of fabric through draping, both in woven as well as knitted fabric, which creates a whole new distinctive shape. Influenced by her heritage, and thus opposing or reacting against a constant obsession with newer trends, Charlotte refers to the geometric cuts and voluminous skirts created by the intricate folding and layering of the Hanbok. A huge fan of her eccentric, bold palette, which was harmonised with natural, organic tones, applied to sculptured organza silk, linen, cotton and loosely knitted fabrics, while she experimented with knitwear structures, Charlotte took colour blocking in a refreshing new direction.
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5. Keva Rands
Fundamental to Keva's own design process is a love of collecting. Shown in her designs, Keva's interest in photography and growing archive of images have formed a rich bank of source material from which she has created potential narratives, and colour and textile stories, encapsulated in her designs of quirky patterns and masculine silhouettes.
