The winners of the Junk Kouture global fashion competition, Eva Donlan, Evie Nugent and Meabh O'Shea from Moate Community School, were given a rapturous welcome home by their fellow students in Westmeath.
The three students were crowned Junk Kouture World Designer of the Year 2023 in Monaco last week. and their success was celebrated with a homecoming party at the school.
Eva, Evie and Meabh's winning design '#TagMe', was made from over 2,500 plastic, coloured tags and handsewn together.
Evie told RTÉ News that they are still in disbelief at winning.
"There were 60 other dresses. And there was ten from each country so there was a lot of competition.
"It's such an overwhelming experience, then winning of course was just so unexpected.
"We're still all in disbelief, but we're just so grateful for it all. And if you told us in 2022 that we'd be where we are now, we just would never have believed you," said Evie.
All the tags used to create #TagMe are plastic colour samples or testers from Delta Q, a plastics manufacturer in Athlone.
Meabh explained the tags can be challenging to recycle.
"The tags are hard to recycle due to their wide array of colours. Plastic is just one of the biggest things in the world at the moment, its just so popular, but its difficult to recycle, especially when there are so many colours," she said.
Huge celebrations at Moate Community School for the homecoming of the winners of Junk Kouture World Designer of the Year 2023! pic.twitter.com/B9CKRiX84S
— Gail Conway (@gailconwaymedia) February 27, 2024
Junk Kouture is a fashion competition challenging schools to design, upcycle and create high-end sustainable fashion from recycled junk.
Sixty haute couture designs made completely from recycled materials took to the catwalk in Salle des Princes in the Grimaldi Forum with ten designs from each Junk Kouture territory including Ireland, the UK, France, Italy, the USA and the UAE.
#TagMe was inspired by the work of Italian designer Missoni. The team organised the tags into their various range of colours as they wanted to incorporate colourful patterns and designs into the dress. The headpiece, is made up of four long trails using 528 white tags, to embrace shape and movement.
Each individual tag was drilled with 12 holes, eight for purpose and four for design adding decorative appearance, which was a lot of work in itself according to Eva Dolan.
"Once we had them all drilled we serrated them into colours, then we sewed them together. It was a lot of work but it wasn't too difficult to sew at the beginning. It got a little more difficult as we got more and more together, but it was doable," said Ms Dolan.
This is the 13th year that the school has entered Junk Kouture with many successes over the year, but this global win is the highest achievement in the competition for the school to date.
"It's kind of unbelievable. We really didn't think we'd get there," said Pamela Keogh, the art teacher overseeing the project.
"We've been at this for 13 years, and we've had great success. But it's amazing, the whole town gets behind the school on this project on Junk Kouture.
"I've had lots of businesses who give me, or come to the school to tell us about waste materials they have and ask would we like to use them, so we have tons of stuff around the place."
Ms Keogh said the students who take part are mainly in Transition Year so a lot of their time is spent working on the dress.
"It usually starts in September, and by October they have sourced materials and are trying out new things with them," according to Ms Keogh.
"I'm so proud of them, they're a fantastic bunch of girls, a joy to go away to Monaco with. Everything was perfect. They're just great."
