Left: Nicole Tilling’s ‘I am Woman’ collection, modelled by Michaela Buckle
Right: Leonard Hill’s ‘Laughing Gas’ collection, modelled by Hannah Grace Nott
Photo: (left) Fiona Quinn (right) Matt Hurley
Exceptional design and creativity come under the spotlight next week at the annual Whitecliffe School of Fashion and Sustainability end-of-year fashion show.
Being held on 14 December, the show is an opportunity for students from the Bachelor of Sustainable Fashion Design, Diploma in Fashion and Apparel Technology, and the Bachelor of Jewellery Design and Technology to showcase their work.
Whitecliffe students have long had a reputation for being innovators and creative thinkers, with diverse personal visions and aesthetics.
More than 70 students participate in showcasing their end-of-year collections at the annual event. Students have explored a range of sustainable practices, including cultural sustainability, natural dyeing, garment repurposing and upcycling, crafts and fabric manipulation, innovative textile creation, and embellishment, as well as expressing concepts from the pseudo functionality of fashion, geometric abstraction, and body movement to raising awareness of climate change and social issues such as plastic surgery.
Among those exhibiting are Year Three Bachelor of Sustainable Fashion Design students Leonard Hill with his ‘Laughing Gas’ collection and Nicole Tilling’s ‘I am Woman collection’.
‘Laughing Gas’ is a collection that seeks to ask questions surrounding fashion’s relationship to technology, the current global climate crisis, the body, and new materiality. By blurring the lines between the body and machine, it suggests new relationships between form and functionality, suggestive of modern anxieties surrounding technology’s simultaneous responsibility for the climate crisis, as well as its possibilities to provide new solutions.
Nicole Tilling’s ‘I am Woman’ collection focuses on sustainable and ethical practices in an effort to contribute to the growing number of young fashion designers, working to alleviate the excessive pollution caused by the fashion industry. The garments are made from silk, a biodegradable natural fibre, using cochineal dye, representing passion, power, and energy.
Tickets are available online.