Fashion students win in national competition

BUDDING young fashion designers at Chipping Norton School could be the Stella McCartney of the future after winning awards for their creations in a national competition.
Sixth former Rosa Avilez won first prize in the A2 category of Young Fashion Designer UK while Rosie Caldwell won a highly commended award for her work at GCSE.
The Midlands YFDUK Centre received more than 100 entries from 26 different schools for this year’s award and 18 students were selected to attend the final a the Royal Grammar School in Worcester by a panel of judges including retail buyers, designers and education specialists.
Both students presented their work to the judges and had two 10-minute interviews, answering questions and explaining how their projects evolved from the initial design brief to the final product.

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Miss Avilez has won a work placement with Inkberrow Design Centre (IDC) where she will work with the IDC studios and their tutors to design her own six-piece capsule collection.
And her work will be showcased at the Midlands Fashion Award in Birmingham in October, the Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch show at Birmingham NEC next March and the London Excel Centre a month later.
“I was grateful for just having been selected as a finalist for the Young Fashion Designer UK competition as the opportunity allowed me to see the amazing work of other designers of my age group," she said.
"The experience was nerve racking as the judges were looking at every detail of our designs and were also interested in our research into the marketing and costing of the product.
"I was incredibly happy and pleased to have been selected for the first prize, the opportunity to design my own collection.
"I am excited to begin working on this new project as it will be a great experience and preparation for what could come in the future and I am also extremely grateful to Mrs Drinkwater (Textiles teacher at Chipping Norton School) for having given me the opportunity to take part in the Young Fashion Designer UK 2014 competition.”
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The Kim Kardashian iPhone game is a brilliant guide to fame

It’s just another day in Beverly Hills, on the steps of Metropolitan Magazine, when Simon Orsik calls—again. “Hey, Sonia,” he says. “Glad I’ve got you on the line.” Lif, an exclusive club in Miami, is interested in booking me for an “appearance.” I look at my schedule. The shoot at Metropolitan this morning took up a lot of my available energy—but Kim Kardashian, my fairy godmother/benefactress/friend, says with a little bit of work in modeling, I might make it into films one day. I decide to take on the Lif appearance. It’s only an hour long, and once I’m in Miami, I’ll be able to work at the Kardash boutique Kim put me in charge of. That will get me a little extra cash toward buying this dress I’ve been eyeing. And anyway, a flight to Miami only costs $15. (The dress, meanwhile, costs $5,000.)
Welcome to Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, the new iOS game that has taken over my life and, if sales numbers are any indication, the lives of many others. The game’s developer, Glu Mobile, will likely rake in $200 million off the game, which has about 150,000 five-star reviews and seems unlikely to budge from the iTunes top-10 game charts anytime soon. In the game, your mission is to become an A-list celebrity, but once you do, you can still hang out, doing ever more runway shows and beach shoots, dating models or photographers or dental hygienists. The world is a big playground of ladder-climbing and leisure, encompassing a handful of swanky neighborhoods where rich people frolic: Hollywood, SoHo, Calabasas, and Tribeca.
The most interesting thing about KKH is how weirdly accurate it is about fame in our decadent, post-Twitter world. Kim Kardashian’s haters—and she has plenty—generally deride KKH for its superficiality. But KKH is aware of the foibles of fame. They’re built right into the game’s design, with an underlying message that says: You know that thing Kim Kardashian has? It’s silly and achievable. And hard. But also pretty damn fun.
picture: formal dresses online Haters aside, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood is undeniably well made. The small screen houses a complex variety of options without getting too crowded. The graphics are beautiful, and the wardrobe for the game is stunning (unsurprising, as it’s drawn from Kim Kardashian’s own closet). The game has several forms of currency—level-ups, K-Stars, dollars, and energy bolts—plus individual ratings for specific skills, like dating, industry knowledge, and professional networking. But you don’t need to know any of that to start playing. You don’t even have to design your own character if you don’t want to. Everything happens with tapping, and major decisions are presented as a menu of straightforward options, like Simon’s call I described above. It’s an intuitive interface.
I started playing Kim Kardashian: Hollywood in Beverly Hills, while I was stuck in a hotel for 12 days straight for a television conference. I’d been to Los Angeles before but never to the super-wealthy part. In a week, I saw more Rolls-Royces and Bentleys than I’d seen in my entire life. The hotel for the conference is the same one that hosts the Golden Globes. When I went down to the pool after meetings one afternoon, I wasn’t allowed to take a lounge chair until I’d cleared it with the attendant. He said, in passing, as he handed me a bottle of water: “Yeah, there’s a lot of stars here today.”
In the evenings, after our long question-and-answer sessions with actors and showrunners, the networks would invite us to parties where critics, in our sneakers and jeans, could hobnob with actors and actresses who were making yet another appearance in a day filled with them. Our favor was being curried, and it’s part of the game to make the dowdy writers feel special by putting them up in Beverly Hills and inviting them out to cocktails with celebrities. And yeah, it was dazzling. But it was also overwhelming. There’s something exciting about the world of fame, but that excitement is quickly subsumed by exhaustion.
Kim Kardashian: Hollywood became my guide to this alien realm. The world of the game is the world of celebrity, a small bubble of super-rich people who are all competing with each other to get noticed. Every conversation has a motive behind it, whether that’s dating to improve your social standing or networking at a club with industry VIPs. To emphasize that cynical reality, you win little rewards for having the “right” conversations.
Naturally, the best way to impress is to dress the part. KKH doesn’t care what you wear as long as it costs a whole bunch of money. You can dye your hair blue and pair that with an evening gown, a purse with a cat in it, and thigh-high boots—paparazzi will notice you and snap photos, and fashion editors will say you look great. The point is to look rich, not just put-together. (The game also lets you change your hair color, skin tone, and even nose/face/mouth shape at any time. Plastic surgery is just a tap away.)
The primary currency of KKH is not money or skills, but energy, indicated by a blue lightning bolt at the top of the screen. Every significant action you take requires energy: dating, modeling, working at Kardash, networking with influential people. As you play though the game, you use up your reserves, and then you have to either wait or buy more. At first, it’s easy enough to wait a few hours to top up, but as you progress through the game, the temptation to spend 50 K-Stars on a bunch of energy grows stronger.
If nothing else, the energy conceit is a smart, devious way to make money: The K-Stars cost $5 for 50, with bigger package deals that go up in increments to $100 for 1,250. Forty K-Stars will buy you 50 energy bolts, which you can use in just a few minutes if you’re in the middle of something big. It requires a lot of energy to stay in the game—to keep dating needy B-listers, to keep your modeling game on-point, to hustle cash for a wardrobe update.
In the middle of two weeks at the Beverly Hilton, the energy component rang eerily true. It doesn’t necessarily matter that you’ve bought a gorgeous dress. If you’re too tired to make it to Miami, then you’re not going to make your appearance.
And fame is measured in the most obvious way: Twitter followers. Or, rather, something that approximates Twitter followers without infringing on Twitter’s copyright. The star in the upper-right corner of the screen, which keeps tabs on what tier of celebrity you’re on (C-list? B-list? E-list?) also tells you how many fans you have. Each new media appearance, whether that’s a photo shoot or a party, gets you more devotees. A feed pops up when you do something newsworthy and mentions you by name. You might generate buzz by buying posh living quarters, being well dressed, spending a bunch of energy on a fashion shoot, or even having a fight with the game’s two or three villains in public. (Willow Pape and Dirk Diamonds are the jealous strivers who take umbrage at your success. They hashtag their tweets about you with #ratchet, #Obamacare, and #Illuminati.)
To play Kim Kardashian: Hollywood is to engage in a familiar fame game, an exercise in jockeying for “likes” where the only work worth doing is photo shoots, magazine spreads, or merchandising. It might not be a divine calling, but it’s reflective of what celebrities do to get famous. Fame, after all, is a slippery quality that has little to do with success and even less to do with talent. Just get noticed, the game says, reflecting our own standards for tabloid stardom.
Kim Kardashian herself played this game. Not Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, though probably that, too. I mean the bigger game. The game of getting from the E-list to the A-list, starting out as an unknown with a sex tape and ending up on the cover of Vogue. Kardashian is a punchline for many people, but to others, especially to those playing KKH, she’s an example of someone who played this rigged, flawed game and won. Kim Kardashian is herself making around $80 million for sponsoring KKH—four times her salary last year. It looks like a vanity project, but Glu Mobile actually approached Kardashian, not the other way around. Glu’s designers had a concept and knew they could make it bigger with the draw of a celebrity star attached to it.
KKH is tailored to Kim Kardashian’s life—the wardrobe is just the tip of the iceberg. Kim, in the app, is a benevolent friend with a sparkly, huge engagement ring and pictures of her family up in her own stores. She’s fuller-figured and differently dressed than anything your own character can choose, and none of the choices for noses or eyes get anything close to Kim’s signature look.
It’s even got characters in it that are modeled not-so-subtly on real-world figures. Willow Pape is thought to be a dig at Paris Hilton, at least according to Buzzfeed’s Whitney Jefferson, and Elizabeth Korkov at Muse magazine looks just like Vogueeditor Anna Wintour. This is the rabble of people Kim Kardashian had to work with. Now it’s your turn.
It would be all too easy to dismiss KKH. It’s a game about fashion and celebrity and being friends with Kim Kardashian, and those are all, ultimately, silly fantasies for most of us. But the game is a phenomenon because it’s a fantasy that speaks to the ethereal and addictive quality of investing purely in image.
What Hollywood requires for celebrity is ridiculous—lavish expenditures on clothes, new houses, nose jobs and collagen injections, and a decadent, eco-ignorant approach to air travel and cars. Kim Kardashian: Hollywood offers a chance to see that glamorous world for its flaws as you spend fake energy on photo shoots for fans who don’t actually exist. You also get to be friends with Kim herself, who might counsel: Don’t hate the player, or the game, just becauseKKH presents an accurate picture of celebrity. Instead, ask yourself why this is the only way to win.
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How World Wars Made Females More Androgynous

Britain entered World War I on August 4, 1914. One hundred years later, the WWI centenary is being honored with a slew of exhibitions and commemorative events, from a light-a-candle hour to memorials for the fallen.
The fashion industry is no exception. Several exhibitions from Britain to New Zealand are spotlighting how the war impacted women’s clothing, from raising hemlines to new utility wear worn by the ladies left at home. Some women even turned to their husband’s closets to dress themselves for their new occupations supporting the home front.
"As the men left for war, women took on what were previously male-dominated roles such as farm or factory work. The physicality of the work meant that traditional women’s attire wasn’t appropriate. Women raided men’s wardrobes and altered shirts and trousers to fit,” says Doris de Pont, curator of The Way We Wore—In Service and On The Street, an exhibition opening at the online New Zealand Fashion Museum on Tuesday.
At the Bath Fashion Museum, meanwhile, The Great War in Costume: Family & Fashion on the Home Front is running until August 31 and displays around two-dozen wartime costumes, including a dozen looks from the PBS series Downtown Abbey, which is set during WWI. The exhibition includes uniforms and civilian dress, memorabilia, and propaganda items that show how, once the war started, it was time for women to begin wearing trousers.
(Photo:bridesmaid dresses australia) “World War One changed the lives of women for ever due to the recruitment of most healthy men,” Yvonne Hellin-Hobbs, the exhibition’s organizer, says. “With this, women’s fashion changed; corsetry was softened and clothing became more practical, with some working women even wearing trousers for the first time.”
The Bath exhibition used British journalist Kate Adie’s publication Fighting on the Home Front: The Legacy of Women in World War One for inspiration. In the book, Adie shows how women “emerged from the shadows of their domestic lives and took up essential roles—from transport to policing, munitions to sport, entertainment, and even politics. They became citizens in their own right and helped win the war,” as per the official blurb on the book.
The New Zealand exhibition, on the other hand, relied on the general public to assemble its show.
(Photo:formal dresses australia online) The Way We Wore exhibits around 60 photographs from World War I and World War II gathered through an open call to New Zealanders and presents them with their associated stories. (A selection of the images is also being published this week in Glory Days magazine.)
These photographs were taken from the “attics and old suitcases of New Zealanders.” “The images show how real people dressed and interacted at the time, and the impact of the war years on our sartorial style,” De Pont says. “As the centenary of the beginning of WWI draws close, we felt it was a time to reflect on what life was like not only for soldiers and those involved on the battlefield, but also for people who kept the home fires burning during very trying times.”
The impact of World War I and II can be seen both in the practical construction of garments and the inventive use of the limited materials at hand. “Fashion, as we think of it, was all but suspended during the war years not just ‘over there’ but on the home front too,” De Pont says.
With rationing in full force during those years, De Pont was interested in seeing “how restrictions in materials manifested themselves in creative and thrifty ideas for civilian dress as well as uniforms.”
Think hemlines that rose during the conflict, and then fell again as the war came to a close.
Prior to the war, New Zealand was prospering in its role as “Britain’s Farm,” and women in particular, according to De Pont, were attuned to the latest fashions from London and Paris.
But New Zealand and Australia were particularly hard hit by the war. “After the Gallipoli campaign was not only a resounding defeat for the Allies but also resulted in the decimation of the New Zealand contingent sent to participate, with a casualty rate of an astonishing 88 percent of their troops dead or wounded. With a population of only 1 million in 1914, this and the subsequent disproportionate and heavy losses at the Western Front meant that every New Zealander at home was affected directly or indirectly by this war,” De Pont says.
Fashion reflected these losses.
“Ostentatious dress was considered inappropriate even where people had the means. Sober and muted colors including shades of gray, one described in a local paper as ‘Battleship,’ were prevalent. Jewelry and other showy decorative elements were put aside,” De Pont says.
But the war also helped modernize women’s dress.
“Women gained a great deal of freedom during wartime. They were reluctant to return to pre-war gender definitions, including the definition of what was proper for a woman to wear,” De Pont explains. “In the post-war years in New Zealand, as elsewhere, many young women were reluctant to pull back from an active life outside the home and to demure to the constraints of domesticity and corseted fashions. Luckily, fashion too had moved on and in the immediate post-war period the gamine look emerged, unstructured it was made for freedom and action. Vibrant color surfaced in textile and in beading and embroidery. All over the world following the fashion of Paris and London became fashionable again.”
But Paris was no longer the only guide post for what was en vogue. New York took over as the epicenter of fashion due to the difficulties communicating with France during the war. The Big Apple influenced the industry by introducing a more practical look combined with the existing femininity.
The war’s influence on designers was lasting, even having an impact on some collections seen on the runway today.

When New York-based designer Thom Browne sent out his latest menswear collection in Paris in June, guests arrived to find what looked like rows of WWI soldiers in gray uniforms, sitting motionless with plasters over their eyes, as his latest designs were paraded around the ominous setting, in a rare runway reference to the centenary.

Fashion Design Center Pioneers Industry

(Photo:formal dresses) In the renegade spirit of Denver fashion, Lisa Ramfjord Elstun, CEO of the newly conceived Fashion Design Center located at 3301 Lawrence Street, is pioneering a much-needed trend in the trade. Opened in February, in the hotter than hot RINO (River North) district, this one stop shop is a veritable candy store for fashion veterans and wannabes.
Elstun is no stranger to fashion. She designs a high end line called LRE Couture and was a featured designer at the Denver Art Museum during the YSL exhibit. She also produces a collection of upcycled eveningwear called Sutra by Ellery. In 2014 she was awarded Westword’s MasterMind of Fashion/Design, an honor bestowed upon those with up and coming ideas and “out of the box thinking.”
She was a founding member of Denver Design Incubator (DDI) located in the heart of North Denver at 2040 Clay Street. Its mission is to provide mentorship for emerging fashion designers and equipment for its members that will “stimulate entrepreneurial activity and encourage small business growth to strengthen Colorado’s economy.” This blend of fashion plus business is a sorely needed component for the young and quirky design community that Denver boasts. DDI has been an important conduit for offering amenities that include sewing machines provided and maintained by neighbor, Ralph’s Power Sew, as well as cutting tables, dress forms, etc.
DDI is still trying to realize its full potential and is reinventing itself with a “Re-grand Opening and DDI Showcase” on Saturday, July 19 from 4-7 pm with food, music, Made In Colorado Designers and manufacturing resources at the open market. At 7:30 there will be a Parisian style fashion show. The event is being hosted by Diem Sports gear, Ralph’s Power Sew and DDI and is billed as “A celebration and showcase dedicated to local manufacturing. Diem Sports gear, recently named Colorado’s most ethical business of 2014 is re-opening with a new sublimation shop. Because of the proximity of Diem to DDI it will allow Diem to do their small-scale production there, and DDI members will have access to Diem as a source of printing along with the other amenities at DDI.”
It is with this same spirit of collaboration that Elstun seeks to expand Denver’s fashion industry to the next level. She notes, “As a founding member of DDI, I saw that this was the next step. The big piece that was missing for fashion designers, was a one stop shop in a collaborative work space that would allow people to have exactly what they needed to ‘make it’ in Colorado.” To this end FDC has created a professional workroom with studio spaces available for rent, access to state of the art equipment, patternmakers and sewers for the development and proto-typing of garments, a showroom, and a retail space that allows designers to sell their collections.
A wide menu of services are available including access to design and business professionals that can help mentor and guide up and coming designers, brand development and messaging, sales & marketing, an industry standard workroom for patterns, markers, samples and small runs.
The ability to share costs and representation at international and domestic trade shows under the FDC umbrella offers an opportunity for businesses to compete in a global market, without the exorbitant individual cost of acquiring a space.
Elstun is in good company with senior “cohort”, Carol Engel-Enright who acts as the VP of designer relations and promotion of the center. Enright has a long track record of promoting designers. In her capacity as Internship Coordinator for Colorado State University she has helped bring talented patternmakers and sewers under the FDC umbrella. Two of these graduate students, Phillip Miller and Verretta Andersen won prestigious awards for Best Construction and Best of Show at C.S.U.
Stephanie Ohnmacht is another well-known, local design talent who is utilizing the space. Elstun remarked, “Stephanie is an amazing mentor and business development ‘brainiac’ and we are so lucky to have her with us.” She continued, “Everyone who is involved as part of our team all share the belief in this concept and where it needs to go, drawing from their experiences in the real world.”
The design center is also available to rent for meetings, parties and special events. Its proximity to the trendiest, “new” North Denver neighborhood, and its elegant style gives it appeal to “RINO-newbies,” who may still think it is an edgy part of town.
One recent evening a fashion think tank meeting for FAD (Fashion Association of Denver) brought together designers Mona Lucero, Brooks Luby, Lisa Elstun and her social media wiz kid, Megan Timlin, and related industry professionals, Brandi Shigley of Fashion Denver, Kathy Bacon, of Fashion Forward Radio, Tracie Keesee of Westword, Masha Pichugina, a model and owner of Mix Hookah Lounge, Stephen Replin, a lawyer and investor who has created a Facebook group called “Women who need money for their businesses,” and myself. The gathering was a brainstorm session to create an effective way of communicating and calendaring the disparate Denver design events that often make the industry potential feel smaller than it truly is. The question remains, if Colorado designers banded together in a more cohesive way as fashion capitals like N.Y. or L.A., (both from a design and a production perspective), how high could the Mile High Fashion City go?
The Fashion Design Center promises to be a place of transformation. Elstun is making plans to kick off the Denver Start Up week on September 14 with a fashion event and ice cream social hosted by Little Man. Designs will focus on a concept inspired by sprinkles on a sundae called “A Little Something on Top.”

FDC is also hosting the 1st annual Colorado Apparel Manufacturing Summit in the fall. While she and her husband have self-funded this start up, Elstun says with a twinkle in her eye, “We would love to have investors join our journey to bring the fashion industry back to Denver, by bringing in technology and expertise that will increase efficiency and productivity.”Read more here:bridesmaid dresses

Ogufere: A Contemporary Designer Must be Versatile, Cosmopolitan

(Photo:formal dresses) Titi Ogufere, the publisher of Essential Interiors magazine, Director of the Interior Designers Excellence Award and founder of the Interiors Designers Association of Nigeria (IDAN), is the first Nigerian to be elected as board member of the International Federation of Interior Architects/Designers (IFI). IFI is known as the United Nations of the Interior Design Profession and is the highest order and the sole world body for the industry. The mathematician-turned Interior Designer talks to Omolola Itayemi about being the first Nigerian to be elected to IFI Board, what this portends for Nigeria and the challenges facing interior design industry
Tell us about your foray into interior design and publishing?
I am a mathematics graduate of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Upon graduation, I worked in a furniture company for a year where my interest in interior decoration was kindled. I became curious and did some research which revealed to me that to be an interior designer, you would have gone to school. So off to Dublin I went, I attended Dublin Institute of Design where I studied interior designing for three years.
I learnt things there (at the furniture manufacturing company) but knew I still had to go to school. At that point, it was one of the pioneer companies in that industry in Nigeria and I was encouraged to pursue my interest. I followed that up with another short course in event management. On return to Nigeria, I set up my company, Essential Interiors, and added the production of a magazine named after my company. I describe the magazine as a global guide to cosmopolitan living. I have been providing bespoke interiors for clientele in both residential and commercial projects since 2000.
After I was done with school, I decided to come back to set up the association but it was just a shuttling thing until 2006/2007. I came in first and found out the people in the industry, set up the board before we launched in May 2007 with the support of IFI (international Federation of Interior Architects/Designers) of which we are members of. We are a growing association and enjoy their support.
My foray into publishing offered more opportunities than I could resist and I decided to publish books that promote Nigeria interior design, architecture, fashion and tourism. My books include Celebrating Fashion Today; Luxury Hotels and Hotels in West Africa with photography and IDEA Book of Designs – a compilation of the nominees and winners of IDEA Awards that recognises creativity of architects and designers
How do you feel about this?
I spent the last two years as co-opted board member of the IFI and had an opportunity to drill down into many things a global association does. This has helped with our national association IDAN in putting structure, tapping into the resource of the IFI and looking for ways to improve education and professionalism in Africa.
What is unique about this new board?
We just celebrated IFI’s 50th anniversary in Kuala Lumpur. This was significant because it helped to mark 50 years of design globalisation in our society and culture. Today, representing some 124 nations, IFI has helped to coalesce the Interiors community across the world. This new board is unique because we have an 8-man board with the president from the UK, the president elect from Italy and remaining board members from Africa, South Korea, China, Germany, America and Japan; a good representation of a global organisation.
For people that don’t know, what is IFI?
The International Federation of Interior Architects/Designers (IFI) is the global voice and authority for professional Interior Architects/Designers. IFI is the sole international federating body for Interior Architecture/Design organisations, and acts as a global forum for the exchange and development of knowledge and experience, in worldwide education, research and practice. Often considered as the “United Nations” of the Interior Architecture/Design field, IFI connects the international community in order to further the impact, influence and application of the design of interiors, promote global social responsibility, and raise the status of the profession worldwide.
What is IFI’s Commitment to the Profession?
Over the past half century IFI has remained committed to inspire people to bring value, relevance, responsibility, culture, business, knowledge and identity to the Interiors Profession. As such, IFI will continue well established programmes such as World Interiors Day, and the promotion of the Adoption/Proclamation IFI Interiors Declaration by cities across the globe which looks to coalesce and lead the Interior Design discipline into the future. The success of IFI WING - World Interiors for the Next Generation, Global Student Design Competition and Awards, will return this term as well as IFI CID Dialogues - Cultural Innovation Design Dialogues targeting specific regional interests relating to macro design trends.
What are the most challenging issues facing the design industry? How does IFI seek to address them?
One challenge is that while shelter dates back to the dawn of humankind, and we have been addressing issues related to this aspect of our built environment for thousands of years, ironically as a professional practice, the formalised Interiors discipline is considered to be as young as just over 100 years.
Another dichotomy is that design for interiors is the most popular of practice across the world today. However, its respect and related sense of professional confidence lags behind.
At IFI we are addressing these and other disciplinary, culture and content issues by fostering open discussion and debate. We convene the best minds from around the world to help lead important symposia in which we include all aspects of the community. We make sure to be multidisciplinary and very open minded and future focused. We research, document and publish findings. We share everything with candour and transparency.
As a global body for interior, architecture and design, how does IFI successfully address the diverse issues that may emerge in different countries and regions?
Our agenda items are generally those that percolate up from a minimum of six nations. Thus we address the pervasive issues pertinent and shared by many. We exist to most fairly address the commonalities and we do not take sides. We always aspire to build consensus.
In this case we are akin to the UN. We are high level and care deeply about quality of life impacted by and through design.
What main area does IFI seem to focus on in Africa and what does this new position portend for Nigeria?
Design and design sophistication is rapidly advancing in Africa. We know that everyone is an interior designer today in Nigeria. Our main goal is to bring education and professionalism to our industry. Beyond the ability to think and to think creatively, solve problem elegantly and to manage beauty, art, technology and science with equal ease, the contemporary designer must be nimble, versatile, cosmopolitan and totally literate. IFI seeks to help expand and deepen this knowledge while helping to foster even greater pride in the national heritage and local culture.
The new position puts Nigeria where we belong, as the leader in our continent. We hope for growth and greater collaborations.
How do you plan to improve the interior design assosciation’s communication with the public, media and Africans in the industry on the role design plays in our society?

We have a couple of things planned as an industry from our collaboration with university of Lagos to set up a department for interior design, the first department in our nation. We also have our yearly trade show in May called the GUIDE design show, Our IDEA Conference and Awards ceremony in October is the premier awards for the architecture and interior design industry and this year we have a special event called the industry night, we hope to launch the first colored directory for the entire industry with over 5,000 -isted companies from the architects, designers, decorators, suppliers, builders and real estate developers.Also read here:bridesmaid dresses

Young fashion designer in spotlight

(Photo:formal dresses) John Kelly thought his son had "made the grade" as a contestant on the hit TV show Project Runway when he told his family that the show's "den father" Tim Gunn had complimented him on his designs.
Former Hawera High School student Sean Kelly, 23, is a contestant on the show filmed in New York and now in its 13th season.
Sean's proud parents John and Margaret and sister Hannah say they are "blown away" by Sean's success.
While the show is being filmed, Sean is forbidden to speak about his Project Runway experiences to anyone, even his family.
"It's been hard having him on lockdown with no communication with all this going on. He will come out of it to a barrage of emails and facebook messages," says Hannah.
The young designer now lives in Brooklyn, New York after graduating from Massey University College of Creative Arts last year.
Sean's family are not sure where his inspiration originally came from, although his mother says the women in the family love clothes and fashion.
"Sean has always been arty and he's pragmatic as well, he understands the principles of good construction.
"We went to a race meeting in Auckland once and Margaret was wearing an outfit that Sean had made. Everyone was asking who made it and they were really surprised when she told them our son made it."
Growing up on a farm with a mother who didn't sew may seem an inauspicious start for a fashion designer but Margaret says Sean first asked for a sewing machine when he was 13.
"I never sewed myself and sometimes I used a stapler on the kids' clothes ... when he was 15 he still wanted one and that's when he got his first machine."
As a Year 12 high school student, Sean went to Denmark as an exchange student and his interest in design really took off.
An internship with designer Henrik Vibskov there was followed by work with Alexander McQueen in London and a visit to Milan.
Project Runway fans may have to download season 13 as TV3 has no plans to screen it here at this stage.
Hannah Kelly is looking forward to talking to the brother she watched the show with growing up.

"The suspense is the hard part," she says.Read more here:bridesmaid dresses

Patriotic fashion, beyond red, white and blue

Patriotic fashion, beyond red, white and blue

The Fourth of July brings out all manner and mess of patriotic styles, most of it the equivalent of wrapping oneself in Old Glory. It’s hard to pull off a red, white and blue ensemble and not veer into the highly suspect aesthetics of Uncle Sam. Perhaps that’s why the fashion industry treads carefully when it comes to dabbling in full-blown, flag-waving Americana. Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger are among the few designers who regularly use overt patriotic imagery in their collections. To generally pleasant effect, they are able to evoke blue-jean grit, Wild West glory and, occasionally, even melting-pot diversity without turning camp.

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But over the years, the fashion industry has shown off its pride in country in a host of more subtle and more diverse ways. Designers such as Michael Kors, Tracy Reese and Derek Lam have been inspired by landscapes ranging from the beaches of California to the sunsets of Santa Fe to the gardens of New Orleans to the rocky Atlantic Coast. When the American designers of the French-owned Kenzo have presented their collection in Paris, they have flown in New York bakers to re-create cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery and, later, cookies from Momofuku Milk Bar for their international guests.

And Donna Karan built an industry on the glories of New York and its cityscape of dreams.

To mark the holiday, we recall, in these photos, some of the memorable and unexpected ways in which Seventh Avenue has shown its patriotic fervor through aesthetics, can-do’ism, Made in America loyalty and open-hearted diversity in the spirit of Lady Liberty.

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