Edible Fashion Awards

After months of anticipation, the Edible Fashion Awards arrived. This event encourages creators and designers of all ages to participate. Each design entered must be made of food, food packaging or food related items. These awards are in their 16th year, and are held at the Peak Vision Church in Havelock North. This year there were some changes to the event, as in previous years there was just one theme, but this year all age groups had different sub themes under the main theme of WILD. This year the senior category (Years 9 - 13) had the theme of “Wild Future”. While the event was only on for two days, the designs entered take months of planning and preparation. In my case, I started collecting materials in December 2018. The materials I was working with required drying, flattening and storing to ensure they stayed dry. I am sure that many other designers also started to work on their outfits months before the event. As with any design process, my outfit evolved. As I started to work with the material, changes were made as it became clear that there were more efficient ways of design and construction. While I worked on my design at home, I know some of the other participants from our school made use of the fabric room after school to design and assemble their outfits with the support and guidance of our fabric teacher, Mrs Julie Burn. The awards event is run over two days following many months of preparation. All designs were judged on the runway with a static display where the judges could talk to designers and models about the outfits. A second judging then took place with the designs modelled moving on the runway. Following this judging, the finalists were selected. In the senior category, there were initially twentyone entrants, from these ten finalists were chosen. Of these ten, six were from Karamu, a great representation of our school. Six made it through to the finals of the Senior Design Category. Jorja Fryer with her garment ‘Vision’ Jodi Coombs and Amie Chatterton with ‘Recycled Future’ Grace Sayer with ‘Allcorn Tigflyer’ Abigail McEvoy with ‘Techno Takeover’ Ruby McEvoy with ‘Wild Weather’ (Modelled by a friend) Aiden Arnott with ‘Clan Leader Sloan’ (Modelled by a friend) Isabel Valdez with ‘Gillies of the Grape’ (Modelled by Jamie Hollway) Jorja Fryer was placed 3rd in the senior design category and won the ‘Keep Hastings Beautiful’ Award. The finalists had to return for the sold-out show on Saturday night, following a dress rehearsal on Saturday afternoon. As well as all the finalists showing off their designs, there were performers including dancers, acrobats, and singers, making the event very popular, and well known in the Hawke’s Bay region. With a mainly young group of talented designers, the future looks promising for next year’s competition.

Grace Sayer