Students eyeing London Fashion Week prize

TWO students from the Manchester School of Art have been shortlisted for a prestigious fashion prize.

Annie Oakes and Cat Potter, who both are in the third year of a BA (Hons) Fashion degree, have been named as finalists in the FAD Competition 2014, which has a first prize of £1,000.

Both designed outfits addressing the needs of blind people who love fashion, in response to the competition brief which asked “what can multisensory fashion be?”

Annie said: “Enjoying fashion is a real issue for blind people, there is nothing for them. As part of my research I spoke to a blind fashion blogger who was obviously interested in how she looked but couldn’t actually see what she was wearing, she has to rely a lot on the feel of the fabrics and on having other people tell her how she looked.”

Different sensory activities

Cat said: “I wanted to turn the competition brief on its head and explore how fashion could be suitable for people with different sensory abilities.

“I wanted to create something that could be multisensory from a design perspective, so it was tactile and audible as well as visual.”

Cat’s prints are based on the patterns made by “visual sound waves” – molecules vibrating when they are affected by sound frequencies and the outfits are made of a specially-designed fabric combined with tactile viscose jersey, satin and cotton.

Annie has incorporated braille into her designs, using bespoke braille labels to describe the fabric and to embellish the pieces.

Surprised and excited

Both students will display their completed outfits at London Fashion Week in February, when the winner will be decided.

“I was really excited, it was a massive surprise to hear I had been nominated,” said Cat. “It’s a huge competition and it’s great for the School of Art to have two students nominated.”

“I didn’t believe it – I kept re-reading the email,” said Annie. “Hopefully this will open doors but I’m quite open minded at the moment about what I want to do in the future.”