Art
WATCH&PHOTOS: Limerick School of Art & Design Graduates Launch Unwrap Fashion Event 2019
Pictured at the UNWRAP Fashion Event 2019 at LSAD. Picture: Orla McLaughlin/ilovelimerick.
WATCH&PHOTOS: Limerick School of Art & Design Graduates Launch Unwrap Fashion Event 2019
On Thursday, May 9 graduates from Limerick School of Art and Design LIT launched the Unwrap Fashion Event. The graduates of the BA Fashion Design course and BA Fashion, Knitwear & Textiles course joined forces to unveil their award-winning work in a joint exhibition.
James Greenslade, Head of the Department of Design opened the night saying, “We are here to celebrate two award-winning groups firstly, we are unveiling the BA in Fashion Design graduate exhibition and fashion film preview, this programme has blazed the trail as the leading fashion design course in Ireland for the past 40 years and its graduates are much sought after in the global world of fashion design. We are also here to celebrate the third group to graduate from the programme of Fashion, Knitwear & Textile.”
As part of the BA Fashion Design course, the students get the opportunity to gain real-life experience by going on work placement in the third year. This year, the students have had another very successful year of international work placements all over the world in global designers’ studios, including Ellery in Australia, Simone Rocha London, Nanette Lapore New York, IRO Paris, McQueen London and Game of Thrones Belfast. The BA Fashion Design course is the only Irish fashion design course selected to show at London Graduate Week.
One of this year’s BA Fashion Design graduates was Holly Rose Twomey. Holly won the Student Designer of the Year Award at the 2019 Irish Fashion Innovation Awards.
Programme Leader, Anne Melinn said, “This year’s students have been all over the world doing their work placement in Australia, New York and Paris, this is just a stepping stone for an absolutely fantastic future so I am very confident that you are totally equipped to enter out there in that big bad world of fashion and we wish you all the best of luck.”
The BA Fashion, Knitwear & Textile course is a newer degree in the Limerick School of Art and Design. This will be the third graduating class, which included eleven students. The graduates exhibited a selection of the innovative and accomplished textiles they have created alongside a single look from their garment collection.
Programme leader, Ruth Duignan said, “I just want to say to our eleven graduates that we are incredibly proud of ye and we’re hoping that you are really enjoying your show and your time in the spotlight. We have had a great year, we have shown at the Fashion Innovation Awards, Knitting and Stitching Show, one of our fourth years, Danielle Martin, got the second print prise in the Fashion Formula Competition. We are absolutely delighted it’s been a really really great year. It has been absolutely fabulous teaching you guys. We are very sad to lose you in our studios but we are very excited about the studios that you go to.”
These two groups of graduate students took their inspiration from an array of themes, ranging from a trip to Ethiopia to Vintage Street Fighter Graphics to the Overlooked “Girls” of the Glasgow Style. The work has been produced through an inventive mix of traditional hand skills, such as macramé, hand knitting, hand weaving and embroidery, machine methods such as machine knitting, CAD Knit and Shima Seiki Industrial knit production and cutting-edge methods such as digital printing, laser-cutting and digital fabrication. Donegal Yarns kindly sponsored and supported the BA Fashion, Knitwear & Textile student’s collections.
On the night there was a screening preview of the 2019 BA Fashion Design graduate collection film which was styled by one of Ireland’s leading fashion stylists, Kieran Kilgallon, and shot by filmmaker Albert Hooi. The BA Fashion Design Film was sponsored by Brown Thomas, LEO Limerick and supported by LIT.
Sustainability and recycling /upcycling was a key theme in several collections along with 1920s movies, the Menstrual cycle, Dreams, Heritage, Wren boys and Swing dancing. Current trends and concerns in both the international and domestic fashion and textile industry such as sustainability, craft versus technology, diversity, contemporary consumer habits and the global design marketplace motivated and informed these contemporary textile collections.
Collaboration between students from the BA in Fashion, Knitwear & Textiles, and Creative Media & Design and students from LIT Clonmel featured in a second multimedia fashion showcase. Photography of these students’ work was shot by acclaimed photographer Johnny Savage.
The 2019 LEO Fashion Enterprise Award was presented on the night to two winning students. Mary Killen from the Limerick Local Enterprise Office announced the overall winner and the winner of the special judge’s award. The overall winner of the LEO Fashion Enterprise Award 2019 was, Shauna Ward. Ijeoma Rosita Griffin won the special judges award.
For more information about the Limerick School of Art and Design Unwrap Fashion Event visit
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Photos: Orla Mclaughlin/ilovelimerick