Junk Kouture winner from Wilson’s Hospital School
Clodagh Ramsey, a 14-year-old student at Wilson’s Hospital School in Multyfarnham, was selected as one of the nine top teen designers who will now go on to represent Ireland at the Junk Kouture World Final later this year in Abu Dhabi.
Clodagh from Killucan and eight others were selected from the 60 Irish contestants, who presented their unique creations at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in Dublin on the 5 May.
They were judged by Roz Purcell, Louis Walsh, fashion designer Stephen McLaughlin and singer Soulé. Clodagh was placed in the top nine contestants. She also modelled her outfit in the competition, to the Queen song ‘Who Wants To Live Forever’.
Clodagh is going to be featured as one of five of the contestants in the RTÉ Junk Kouture Documentary this Thursday, 19 May.
She will be talking about the great importance of the climate emergency in this. Her part in the documentary was filled at O’Meara’s Pavilion garden centre.
She created a dress called ‘Bohemian Pampas Tree’, which is living and requires daily water, air and light.
The skirt part of Clodagh’s dress is made out of pampas grass, collected from her garden. The bodice of the dress is made from wine and champagne bottle corks, cut into small pieces embedded in living moss.
Clodagh used many elements, including recycled cat food pouches and black grass, which is placed on the shoulders. She has been watering both the moss and the black grass in her living outfit twice a day for the last sux months!
Her beautiful headpiece was inspired by the Mohawk nation of North America.
Junk Kouture is the world’s largest youth sustainability fashion competition for students aged 13 to 18 years from participating schools across the UK, Italy, France, Ireland, UAE and New York, each of these countries having ten representatives in Abu Dhabi.
Junk Kouture has been an extra curricular activity led by Ms Justyna Byrne in Wilson’s Hospital School for several years and students have competed in earlier competitions. Previous students have made it to the finals in Ireland, but this is the first time that the competition has become international.
Wilson’s Hospital School and Ms Byrne are proud of Clodagh and wish her well as she continues in the competition.