Metamorphosis - the word was enough to send 17 dress design students from Irish design colleges into overdrive, each hoping to win the coveted 14th Smirnoff Fashion Award for 1998.
The victor was Michelle Molloy, from the National College of Art and Design, in Dublin, second was Dara Stokes of the Grafton Academy, Dublin, and third, Fiona Gribben, also from NCAD.
The winner received a cheque for £1,250 and a trophy, and will represent Ireland in Berlin at the Smirnoff International Show in July. Each student had to produce two garments, which showed creativity, craft and an understanding of the business of fashion. The winner was particularly skittish putting lime green rubberised trousers with a net tutu, sprinkled with green feathers and cinched tightly at the waist by black rubber.
All worked hard at torturing the raw material, giving it texture and surface. But which of the two garments was commercial and which avant garde, as the brief required, was hard to tell.
There were eight judges, including Sonja Nuttal, a British designer, Noreen Hall, based in Paris for US magazine Allure, and Ciaran Sweeney, once a winner and about to show his collection in Milan.
And though there seemed to be nothing very Celtic about the designs, the music was as Celtic as it comes from traditional to contemporary. And that was what the winners in Dublin Castle achieved: a bit of the traditional and a lot of the contemporary.