Design by Eavan Butler featured in the NCAD Fashion Show 2016 at The Westbury Hotel
Rising stars of Irish fashion design showcased at the annual NCAD Fashion Show held in The Westbury car park
The annual show presents an opportunity for graduating students to showcase their creative identities and their work processes as they begin their professional careers. This year’s show featured a range of collections, from highly conceptual garments to ready-to-wear, high-street designs.
Angela O’Kelly, Head of Design for Body and Environment at NCAD, commented: “NCAD’s annual fashion show has become a staple of Ireland’s design calendar and continues to be a leading fashion event. This year, holding our catwalk fashion show in the urban surroundings of The Westbury Hotel’s underground carpark further cements the positioning of NCAD as Ireland’s number one producer of cutting-edge fashion designers.”
“The annual Fashion Show serves as a springboard to launch the careers of our graduates and showcase the knowledge, skills and talent that our Fashion Design graduates have acquired and developed during their time in NCAD. We’re very excited about the innovation, quality of design and breadth of creativity that will be showcased at this year’s Fashion Show – it’s an exciting time for the fashion design industry in Ireland!”
For the second year running the event was supported by Brown Thomas, offering a bursary and mentorship to one student, chosen by Brown Thomas Fashion Director Shelly Corkery as the ‘Designer to Watch’. The prize consisted of a €4,000 bursary, an installation of designs in Create at Brown Thomas in July 2016 and also a mentoring programme with the management team.
The NCAD Fashion Show 2016 was also kindly sponsored by The Doyle Collection. The Westbury is part of The Doyle Collection. Pat King, CEO of The Doyle Collection commented, “We take great pleasure in supporting and nurturing Ireland’s emerging young fashion designers; this was reflected in our activities as corporate sponsor of ID2015, the year of Irish design. Following the success of last year’s NCAD graduate fashion show held in our beautiful Grafton Suite, we were extremely excited to be welcoming back the graduate students again this year and host the first-ever fashion show in the underground car park of The Westbury – this space created a cutting edge catwalk in Dublin’s metropolitan heart.”
NCAD Inspired Afternoon Tea at The Westbury
Supporters of arts, culture and design, Dublin’s luxury hotel The Westbury, launches an NCAD Inspired Afternoon Tea
Nestled within the heart of Dublin’s creative quarter, The Westbury is renowned for its commitment to supporting the arts, culture and design. To celebrate The Westbury’s partnership with the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), Dublin’s premier hotel has launched the NCAD Inspired Afternoon Tea. Served in the serene surroundings of The Gallery, guests will have the opportunity to sample exquisitely designed desserts inspired by some of Ireland’s budding fashion designers.
Executive Pastry Chef at The Westbury, Tatjana Upelniece-Kiselova drew her inspiration from five of NCAD’s third and fourth year students who focused their collections on Colour, Print, Pleating, Stitch and Construction.
An impressive fiery red ensemble infused with Colour created by Zoe Redmond, influenced Tatjana to draw on the bold colour choice with a sumptuous cherry macaroon with smooth velvet, mocha cream.
Eavan Butler’s sophisticated Prints took creative vision from Roy Lichtenstein’s famous pop art prints. Tatjana developed this idea, drawing on the citrus feel the outfit brings to create a lime, lemon and grapefruit tart, finished with a modern-day quote. Similarly, Construction by Laura Egan inspired an exotic piña colada entremets from the beautiful black and yellow dress based on fond childhood memories.
A delicate hand-decorated light and fresh blueberry, vanilla cake inspired by the Pleating in Ciana Keating’s ‘Beach Belle’ sky-blue, swimming dress. The delicate cloud-white linen motivated a fluffy, light dessert. The final look, Stitching, by John Burrows influenced Tatjana’s choice of a delicious chocolate and pistachio eclair, with a light raspberry panel to imitate the pastel pattern of the jacket.
Tatjana Upelniece-Kiselova described how she enjoyed creating and designing desserts; “As a pastry chef it is particularly important to pay attention to the finer details, as it is necessary to have a balance between both how the cakes and pastries resemble the NCAD fashion designers creations and how they will taste for our guests. It was a very exciting challenge to meet with the designers in their NCAD fashion studio and choose which from some of their amazing creations and decide which ones would translate best as a dessert. Overall, it was an incredible experience which I thoroughly enjoyed and it was an absolute pleasure to work with the NCAD fashion graduates, who have each created truly inspiring collections.”
Speaking about the partnership and afternoon tea Angela O’Kelly, Head of Design for Body and Environment at NCAD commented; “We are delighted to be working with The Doyle Collection and The Westbury and received a fantastic response from our recent graduate fashion show which was held in none other than the car park of The Westbury! The Doyle Collection’s support of art and culture singled them out as an ideal partner for the show. We are particularly excited to see how the work of our fashion graduates has inspired the creation of a new Afternoon Tea and we are interested to see how the use of different ingredients to develop textures, colours and shapes will rival the original designs.”
