USING anything to hand - from wood bark to potato peels - the 20 Irish fashion design students taking part in the 13th Irish Smirnoff Fashion Awards, sprayed, twisted and contoured, than sewed, their way to finals.
The awards were presented at a fashion show in Dublin Castle yesterday.
With a theme of "Inner Vision", imagination ran wild, and the wildest ideas earned the winner, Alan Kelly, a £1,250 prize.
A second year student at Limerick Senior College, Alan Kelly called his collection of three "My Life, My Hopes, My Dreams".
Adele Cunniffe, a student at NCAD in Dublin, took place with a more cerebral based on writers, which called "Read Yourself". Worked in calico and cheesecloth, to a look of parchment and literary innuendo was subtle - as in book shaped pockets collars lined with Heaney poems - and dramatic, with portraits Irish writers decorating the skirt.
Humorous and original, Padraig Sheehan's "Famininity" earned him third place. A student from Mallow College of Design and Tailoring, he adorned cheesecloth dresses with garlands made from dried potatoes, proving frugality can be attractive.
Alan Kelly now has the chance to represent Ireland at the finals of the Smirnoff International Fashion Awards in Toronto, in November, where the top award is worth $10,000.
Wayne Hemmingway, from the Red or Dead fashion house, who headed the panel of seven judges, said that the awards gave students an opportunity to break free from the cautionary restraints of college tutors, and get their names into circulation.