Stepping Out: Queensland's Metropolitan South Institute of Tafe
Belinda Smart talks to a current and former fashion student from Queensland's Metropolitan South Institute of Tafe (MSIT) about making their mark in fashion.
For a gal whose earliest memories were of her mother's nimble fingered patchwork and quilting creations, Emily Black's winning design in the Student Designs category of the 2008 National Retail Association (NRA) Design Awards was a fitting creation.
"I wanted the design to be quilted with a strong sense of structure, to reference those influences I'd picked up from my mother. The assignment was to work with wool and I created a dress with a three tiered skirt in black, with undersides in black and white houndstooth."
A third year student on MSIT's fashion design course, Black admits to being "dumbstruck" when the frock was announced as a winner at the NRA's Gold Coast award ceremony on March 19.
"Initially I wasn't even going to enter. There were three other girls from the Tafe who'd entered and I was expecting one of them to win."
The accolade has given Black the brass to enter MSIT's Italian Scholarship and ModaItalia Scholarship, which offer winners a six-month stint and summer course respectively, at the Polimoda Institute, based in Florence, Italy.
"I was planning to head overseas once I've finished the course, but the chance to study while I'm there would be incredible."
After that, Black is tossing up how best to take on the fashion world. "I'd love to work for a big company and experience something larger scale, but there's another side of me that would like to follow my own path and figure it out myself." Regardless of how things pan out, Black's guiding obsession for vintage prints, also sparked in early childhood, is unlikely to wane.
"I've been sewing and making things since I was little and for as long as I can remember I've loved vintage clothing and 50s and 60's prints. I go op shopping all the time and I very rarely look at the garments themselves. Instead I always hone in on the prints to figure out how I can transform them."
Kimberley Sakzewski's approach to her career in fashion has been nothing if not top down. For the former MSIT millinery student, a specialism in what she describes as "character driven" headwear has led into fascinating territory, particularly following the launch of her own Zoo-ski label in November last year. Cognisant of the web's mighty power, the former freelance writing entrepreneur made sure she had a functioning website from the get-go, a move which paid off handsomely.
"I got myself a job working for the Queensland ballet in February this year. Not only was it fantastic to clinch a paid millinery gig but the whole experience, working with costumier Noelene Hills on the production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, was just incredible."
The ballet required eight hats from Sakzewski and also inspired her to take her talent further. "I had my first sniff of a theatrical environment and I loved it. I was sitting alongside all these work room girls who were making costumes and I couldn't help but be sucked in."
Before long, she was toying with the idea of creating a fashion range to go with her hats and, more significantly still, taking out the Rising Star gong at the NRA Design awards in March.
For a woman whose involvement in the contest was initially intended as a networking 'in' to meet designers and tout her services as a milliner, the award, clinched by a cheeky cap-style hat and slip dress ensemble, was "gob-smacking".
"It really has been the biggest thing in my life," Sakzewski says, adding that she has already received strong interest for the co-ordinating fashion and hat range that followed her win, from Brisbane and Sydney boutiques.
Meanwhile a trip to Melbourne in August will see her pushing her wares in the Victorian capital, in line with a 12 month plan to have a strong foothold in all three cities. Sakzewski, who ran her own business for years before moving into fashion, has the commercial smarts to achieve her goal.
"I'm pretty happy with all aspects of running a business, from managing cash flow to the branding side of things. The main thing that is absolutely crucial is to get your product out there and in front of as many people as you can."
By Belinda Smart