EMMA Whiteside came out with a prize of $5000 from this year’s World of Wearable Arts after wowing the crowds with a metallic masterpiece.
Her copper creation called Queen Adelaide secured her the Shell Sustainability Prize.
“I’m determined to do something with this money,” she says.
“I’m hoping to travel to China and do a bit of networking.”
The 21-year-old Howickian moved to windy Wellington to study industrial design at Victoria University about four years ago.
“I’m pretty sure I was the only one in my school to enter the awards,” she told the Times.
“Within my degree I design products like fridges, furniture and medical equipment.
“There isn’t much scope to work in a fashion sense so to speak but I just wanted to give it a go.”
Miss Whiteside, who will soon graduate, says there aren’t a lot of jobs readily available after completing an expensive tertiary education.
“This is the first award I’ve won but I have received scholarships before. It’s amazing to win this amount of money.
“Travelling opens up possibilities for me to find jobs, which are quite hard to get in my field.”
To qualify as a recipient for the sustainability award, her garment had to be made from at least 85 per cent recycled materials.
She was able to scavenge some scrap metal from a company in Penrose to fashion her wearable art “pretty much for free”.
“The main component is automotive radiator copper.
While on a trip to Auckland, Miss Whiteside ditched the clothes she brought up from Wellington and filled her suitcase with copious amounts of copper, which she took back to the capital.
“I started the garment in March and it had to be finished by June, so I did pretty well to keep studying and worked on it at night.”
Her finished piece weighs about 10kg, something her model tired of by the end of the evening.
“The model didn’t really enjoy wearing it.
“One night she had to wear it for an hour and was quite sore.”
The most expensive part of the World of Wearable Arts (WOW) process for Miss Whiteside was making a box large enough to send the garment to Nelson, even though the awards night was held in Wellington.
