Last night
12 fashion graduates from around Australian showed off their hard work at the Westfield Chermside Australian Fashion Graduate of The Year Award.
Dion Lee, 22, from Sydney Institute of TAFE was
announced as the winner of the prestigious title and received $5000 cash.
One by one, each designer bared their soul to the sold out show and a panel of judges which included David Bush, the national womenswear buyer for
David Jones and Amber Long, owner of the Jean Brown group.
The night belonged to the gracious and softly spoken Dion Lee, who has recently sold his collection
to Belinda Seper’s iconic boutique The Corner Shop which has played a
key role in kick starting the careers of Australian labels such as
Ksubi and Michelle Jank.
While Australian fashionistas may be falling for Lee's combination of
sharp construction and fluid tailoring, the designer has his sights on
the overseas market. “For me it’s a very small market that I have to
draw from in Australia and finding the stockists without really
compromising the quality and standard of the product that I’m trying to
develop.”
Lee will use his prize money to further develop his coming collections. “I’m just
putting winter together at the moment, but then I have a couple of
other projects that I’m working on in the mean time which is exciting.
And then I’d like to work towards summer next year and overseas options
as well.”
With fierce competition from Lee Mathews' architecturally inspired
silhouettes (Australian’s answer to Hussein Chalayan perhaps?) to
Camille McDermott’s poetic menswear and Natalie Foran’s pompom toting
pony club girls, the judges had their work cut out for them.
Choosing a winner was so difficult that a highly commended award was given to three of the finalists including Gay Hastie and his collection of ultra sleek industrial body suits, Laura Prideaux’s raw collection of soft tailored fleecy fabrics and Maricel Cabig who wowed the crowd with her 'little black riding hood' girls wrapped in chunky knits and billowing capes.