Fashion and Retail Design final year student Vinny Lee won 2nd place at the STYLO Fashion Grand Prix Malaysia 2015 held on the 25th – 27th March at the Red Carpet Avenue of Encorp Strand Mall.
STYLO Fashion Grand Prix is one of the most awaited annual events in Malaysian fashion industry, this year on its eighth season. It is sponsored by Mercedes-Benz, and it coincided with the beginning of the Petronas Formula One Grand Prix weekend. The event consists of exciting fashion shows featuring top local designers, fashion parties, and exhibitions open to the public. This year’s event was attended by the internationally renowned designer, Datuk Jimmy Choo.
This year’s event was themed ‘Anarchy’, requiring designers to use recycled material to create their designs. Vinny Lee used a sub-theme of ‘Hunger’, creating her designs from a potato sack, the rough material representing the rough life people in hunger stricken areas face.
She said she also chose to use potato sack in order to stir away from the common fashion norm of using plastic and paper whenever there is a theme of recycling.
“I wanted my design to be unique and creative, not something everybody is doing,” she said.
Vinny said creating designs for the Limkokwing Fashion Club and having her designs on the runway during the fashion shows held every Thursday gave her experience and confidence in designing for the competition.
“We are used to designing for runway, every Thursday we have fashion shows in campus and that experience prepares us for the real world.”
She also said she has had plenty of experience handling outside fashion shows as the University organizes opportunities for them to assist in industry fashion events.
“I have helped backstage in the Chanel Fashion show, and through that, I know industry expectations of fashion designs,” she said.
Her next move is preparation of 12 designs for the Malaysia Fashion Week, another popular Malaysian event that features celebrated designers from Malaysia and South East Asia.
She says studying in the diverse and multicultural Limkokwing University inspires her designs as she gets to meet people from all over the world, learn their culture and background, their traditional attires, and their view on fashion. She also said the University being the first to have a fashion label is a benefit to all its fashion students, as it ‘motivates them to develop their own brands in future’.
Limkokwing University students have been making their presence felt at the STYLO Fashion Grand Prix Malaysia, with another Fashion and Retail Design student, Yona Yuliani Hutari from Indonesia winning the ‘Emerging Designer of the Year’ award last year.
