PHOTO: Jess Pullar.
By Jess Pullar, reporting for the Christchurch Mail
West Melton fashion design student Natalie Weaver is gearing up to sell her work for the first time.
Along with other CPIT 3rd-year fashion students, she will be exhibiting her collection at FORM, an event hosted at The Colombo next month.
Weaver, 22, who is in her final year of her diploma in fashion design, was on work placement earlier this year Christchurch-based Deval and is excited to show her collection, which she said reflects Deval’s style.
Titled ‘My lover, she fled’, the collection references Deval’s fluid aesthetic and focus on natural fibres. In fact, Weaver chose to intern with Deval because of its ethos of using natural fibres.
“I really strongly think you should be wearing nice things next to your skin,” she said.
Her own design aesthetic doesn’t focus on trends; instead she wants to make garments that are timeless.
“There’s a nod to current trends, but its not exclusively following any of them,” Weaver said. “You don’t want it to be something that someone wears for a month then biffs out the window.”
For her next collection, Weaver is exploring ways of portraying sound through textures.
“Light only travels straight, whereas sound can bend around things, so I’d like to contrast textures like silks.”
CPIT fashion tutor and programme leader Niki Chrisp said today’s design students were more conscious of making their clothing sustainable.
“They are more environmentally conscious,” she said. “Consequently, they are more prepared to be New Zealand-made, which means small production. They have to do the whole thing here.”
Fellow student Renuka Malik, 21, who scooped the Award of Excellence at last year’s Hokanui Fashion Awards, completed her placement with Nom*D in Dunedin.
She said the experience gave her a great insight into the industry, including production lines and distribution, which she really liked.
The CPIT students will display their work at the FORM exhibition on July 4, before the garments are displayed for sale at The Tannery for a week.
