Achill design student wins Fashion Award

Achill design student wins Fashion Award


Anton McNulty
antonmcnulty@mayonews.ie

AN Achill student fashion designer who won a prestigious Fashion Show award last week hopes the success will catapult her to greater things and help her start her own business.
GMIT Art & Design student, Mona Sweeney claimed first prize in the Vodafone Student Design Award 2013 at the Vodafone DIT Fashion Show in Vicar Street Dublin last Wednesday. Her winning design, entitled ‘Morphic Opulence’ centred on the dual theme of vulnerability and protection and fashion as armour and was chosen as the winner from a shortlist of ten.
The Vodafone DIT Fashion Show is in its tenth year and the Student Design Award is a prestigious competition for budding students to win. Mona, the daughter of Frank and Olivia Sweeney told The Mayo News she was shaking when her name was read out as the winner and hopes it can help her in her future career.
“I couldn’t believe it, I was in utter disbelief,” she said when giving her reaction to winning the award. “It was very surreal, I did not expect it at all. The other designs were so good, I was happy to be in the final, but to win, my God, I was shaking.
“It is a very well known [award] and very prestigious. One of the judges is a designer so it can be a brilliant boost to your career and hopefully it can catapult you onto other things. It was great to see the different interpretations from the different designers, everything was so wild and different.
“Its been an amazing experience to go through the whole design process from sketch to catwalk. I got fantastic support from GMIT and all my lecturers in the GMIT Centre for Creative Arts and Media and truly wouldn’t have been able to do it without them.”
Mona is in her third year of a BA in Art and Design (Textiles) in GMIT’s Centre for Creative Arts and Media and following her studies she hopes to work to other designers with the goal of starting her own business.
The theme of this year’s Vodafone DIT Fashion Show, which was attended by 1,000 people, was ‘House of Chaos: A Twisted Tale’. The judging panel consisted of Ireland’s top stylist Maria Fusco, broadcaster Brendan Courtney (who was also MC at the show), fashion editor at the Irish Independent and Weekend Magazine, Bairbre Power, Arnotts marketing manager Lou Conlon who started the first show with fellow DIT students, and designer and previous winner of the student design element of the DIT Fashion Show Umit Kutluk.  
Tony Magner, lecturer in Textiles, GMIT Centre for Creative Arts & Media, congratulated Mona on her success. “We are absolutely thrilled for Mona. All of us in the Textile Design programme in GMIT endeavour to bring out the best in our students, and help them realise their vision and compete successfully on a national and international platform. Mona has done us proud.”

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