Pasifika win for fashion rookie

Pasifika win for fashion rookie

Whanganui UCOL fashion student Juliet Newton is setting her sights high after achieving a category win in the prestigious Westfield Style Pasifika awards.
Westfield Style Pacifika is the largest and most innovative indigenous fashion show of its type in the world. It takes the form of an award and entertainment spectacular held this year at the new Vector Arena in downtown Auckland earlier this month.

Juliet’s entry won the Resene Asia Pacific category which asks designers “to let the flavours of Asia mix with those of the Pacific too produce a unique blend of Asia Pasifika style.”

Her winning design is a silk dress based on the Mount Cook lily, a pure white mountain buttercup that grows in profusion around the Southern Alps. Around the waist of the dress is an obi, a Japanese sash, woven in traditional Maori style from strips of artists’ canvas.

Juliet says she was aiming at several connections with her design: “The obi represents the weaving of the culture of Asia into the New Zealand culture. The Mount Cook lily I chose for its beauty and shape and also because Mt Cook is popular with Asian tourists and is symbolic of New Zealand.”

With instruction from a young Maori friend, Juliet wove the obi herself: “It took a week to complete. I had never done any weaving before.”

Juliet completes her Bachelor of Fashion at Whanganui UCOL next year and will then head for Auckland where she plans to establish her own label.

Academic Manager for Whanganui UCOL’s School of Fashion, Sally-Jane De Salazar, says Juliet’s win is a triumph for a young designer. She is also impressed that three other Year Two students reached the Westfield Style Pasifika finals. They are Sharmilla Dahya, Kerry Ranginui and Jacynda Birrell.

View the Pasifika winners at http://stylepasifika.co.nz.

ENDS

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