Local Junk Kouture designs set to dazzle at Dublin final

Four local designs will compete in the Dublin final of the Junk Kouture competition tomorrow (Thursday).

Eighty design teams from across Ireland will compete for a place at the 2023 World Final at the Junk Kouture Dublin City Final in 3Arena, Dublin.

There are two entries from Moate Community School, one from Our Lady's Bower and one from Athlone Community College.

Transition Year student at Moate Community School, Sean Murray Gaffey (16) is hoping to qualify for the world final with his design, 'Lighting the Way.'

The dress is mostly made from silver tea lights which Sean said he collected from churches in Moate and Mount Temple and from his uncle who's a priest on Achill island.

Sean said: “It was a case of trying to figure out how to melt them down so using a heat gun I melted each one and then I pulled them when they were hot enough to make that shape. I just moulded and folded them and shaped them differently just to create all the different techniques. I kind of wanted more of a sustainable design so I tried to use onion bag netting instead of tying them together. I used wool for the design of the head piece but it's mainly tied together with onion bag netting.”

Sean started out making a suit first which set him back by a month before he began making the dress. He had the main part of the dress made by last Christmas. “I came into Junk Kouture with the mindset of wanting to make a suit, but then because of the material it was quite brittle. I decided I'd make the dress instead because Ms Keogh said that the designer doesn't always have to walk the runway.”

The all red ensemble was originally meant to incorporate blue in the design but Sean said he thought it was too much of a clash. “It was giving me Superwoman vibes so I just stayed away from that and I thought that all the red would just look more expensive.”

The up and coming designer added that people have made reference to Lady Gaga's meat dress. The head piece was inspired by a bishop's mitre hat and Sean also took a lot of inspiration from tribal designs with the head piece and neck piece.

Sean has chosen the song 'Sadness Enigma' for the performance in the Dublin. “It's very church and kind of related to the inspirational design and the dress is very easy to hold up and move around. It's kind of a stained glass effect almost so hopefully the lights will shine through it on the stage then.”

Speaking about the challenges of Junk Kouture, the Transition Year student said: “Before the photo shoot I was up until all hours because a lot of the tea lights were actually cracked and even last night I was fixing the headpiece and it broke again. That's just the nature of it. It's just so thin and brittle but there's nothing else you can do only replace it."

Sean said the highlight for him taking part in Junk Kouture when when he first learned that he was through to the Dublin final of the competition. The finalists were announced live on TikTok and another Moate entry, #TagMe, was announced first and in all the excitement Sean didn't hear that his design, Lighting the Way had reached the final. “Mine was announced straight after but due to all the screaming, I actually missed mine. Then afterwards we had to text one of the other girls from the class who was at home and text her to find out did I get through or not.”

Sean concluded: “I do want to probably go into art design or fashion when I'm older so hopefully now the show will kind of help me get there and hopefully this will be the first design of many.”

Art teacher Pamela Keogh commented: "It's all about your material and how you can manipulate material and what you can do. Students are asked to do that trying out different techniques with the fabric that they're using. To be able to come up with a plan or an idea that you're happy with, you have to find the ones that you're not happy with and keep pushing and pushing until you do.” Describing Sean's design, Lighting the Way, Ms Keogh said: “This dress, when you hold it up and the light goes through it is really beautiful. That's part of its charm. It's got that whole church vibe and it's quite spiritual in a way."

The second design representing MCS is #Tag Me made by Eva Donlon (16) from Tubber, Méabh O'Shea (15) from Mount Temple and Evie Nugent (17) from Ballymore.

Commenting on #TagMe, Ms Keogh said: When you have light on this it really shines. The head piece is beautiful and when she's performing in it these long pieces we have kind of flow around.

Their dress was inspired by the designer Missoni and his work and made from plastic colour testers from Delta Q, a plastics manufacturer, in Athlone. Méabh said: “We wanted to incorporate colourful designs and patterns into our dress to make more striking impacts when we're on stage and in photos. The students estimate that around 5,000 plastic tags were used to make the dress and there are around 29,208 drills in the tags.

Evie added: "We like the patterns that Missoni used because they were really striking and they catch the eye really easily."

Eva said they very lucky with the different colours that the material was available in. “There was a wide range of colours but they all came in one big bag so we had to separate every colour in it to put it in its right pairs."

They then separated the little sticks that came with the tags and individually drilled twelve holes into tag. Eva explained: “We have four for design purpose and then eight for like the function of the dress to get it all together. We originally tried melting them and gluing them but really the only secure thing was just to stitch them together so that took a lot of time, a lot of needles lost.”

Eva added that they originally wanted to make trousers. “It was referred to like a tree trunk kind of look so we said that we'd abandoned the idea and went with the skirt which ended up working really well. The flow of the ombre blues kind of going into each other ended up turning out really well."

The dress also features two long swinging pieces of white plastic tags which Eva said gives the illusion when spinning that the pieces look like octopus tentacles.

The group was also very active on social media. Eva stated: “One of our TikTok's got half a million views. It was a transition into our dress before the photo shoot and another video got a hundred thousand views so we were kind of lucky with TikTok.”

In relation to challenges in creating the dress, the group highlighted that they started running out of a blue tags for the bottom of the dress while completing the garment. They also had to work to ensure the thread wouldn't unravel whilst stitching the tags together.

Evie said: “Trying to sew the white (tags) together was hard for me because I couldn't figure out how to sew it in a way that you can't see. You have to sew it from the inside so it's really awkward sometimes. She added that she once fell asleep with the dress in her hands whilst sewing the tags together.

“There were a lot of sleepless nights and panicking in the morning but it's all worth it when you're looking back on it, you wouldn't change it,” said Eva. “There is some very hard days, like long days we'd be in half eight in the morning to six in the evening or later but when you're looking back it was really enjoyable. We all definitely got closer, made new friendships and it was a very good experience.”

Another MCS design, ‘Tale of Two Pods’ by Katie Molloy (model), Eimear Keenan and Samantha Irwin made from 3,000 coffee pods, a broken umbrella, old heels and an old Debs dress reached the world final of Junk Kouture last year. The students were in Barcelona last week for the World Retail Congress to speak about their design.

The other finalists are Rein on Me by Ellie Denby and Evie Welton from Our Lady’s Bower created from horse feed bags and She’s All Matt by Eimear Dolan, Zoe Clinton and Dio Doria from Athlone Community College created from bath mats and anti-slips.