Students from Benilde’s Fashion Design and Merchandising (FDM) program swept all awards including the championship title during Aboitiz’s Green Fashion Revolution held last Saturday, January 30, at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay.
The winning team was made up by FDM students Aminah Adriano, Miel Avena, Nicia Bobadilla, Dominique Chio, Tracilyn Choi, Samantha Divina, Jolleen Gabriel, Shanelle Lao, Danielle Mallari, Marni Mallari, Elizah Manano, Kirsten Morales, and Nicole Pineda. They bested teams from Asia Pacific University and University of the Philippines-Diliman.
The team earned five special awards apart from the championship title: Best Theme, Best Bag Design, Best Accessories Design, Best Footwear Design, and Best Clothing Design with a cash prize for each. The Overall Champion award includes a cash prize and funding for their selected Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program. The team gathered an estimate of Php 75,000.
Avant-Garbage
Entitled “Eirôn, Flowers by the Sea”, the collection of DLS-CSB exhibited resorts wear: clothes for people to wear at the beach.
According to Dominique Chio, one of the team members, the concept comes from humans polluting and suffocating the bodies of water. She explained, “the sparks of colors would suggest our title ‘Flowers by the sea’; however, in reality, the flowers in the sea symbolizes trash. Thus, leading to the title’s real meaning: ‘Eirôn, Trash by the sea’.”
Chio stated that Eirôn is the greek word for irony. The irony is that we people serve as the caretakers of these bodies of water. On the other hand, we are responsible for destroying and killing our waters.
“The colorful fringes and details of our collection symbolize trash. It starts with designs that are white and fresh as they gradually become darker towards the finale”, she described.
“To prepare for this competition, my friends and I would stay up late in school working together in our school’s Fashion Textile Lab, where we dyed, fringed, sewed, quilled and laundered our garments. We honestly have to thank Benilde’s Fashion Textile Lab for our collection!” she added.
With the theme “GreenER Design for a BetterWorld [sic],” it was the first time Aboitiz’s “Ecouture” fashion competition was held in Manila. Now on its fifth run, it started in Cebu as part of their CSR program back in 2011. As early as December, DLS-CSB started to work on the collection and was finalized in January for the pre-judging.
