A degree of passion for fashion

11:39am Monday 16th July 2007

Fashion has to be flamboyant to achieve that Wow factor.' Conscious of that, and of the need to get noticed, Cassandra Hughes came up with a quirky idea to draw attention to her collection.

The dog dress isn't a conventional outfit and Cassandra certainly doesn't anticipate owners clamouring to get their pampered pooches to sport it, but it's certainly getting her noticed.

While big in America, pet fashion is available in Britain but has yet to achieve the same massive following. Conscious of that, Cassandra - a fashion graduate of Bradford College - was canny enough to use the idea to make her stand out from the crowd - something all budding designers strive to do.

And that's important when you're facing tough competition from Britain's other up-and-coming fashion talent.

The quirkiness of Cassandra's turquoise leather canine-inspired creation certainly made an impact. Cassandra's dog ensemble was nominated for two awards - Best Accessory and Best Illustration - at the recent Graduate Fashion Week, an event regarded as the best platform for budding designers to showcase their talents.

She didn't win but she wasn't disappointed. Being nominated, she says, was a bonus. "And it was such a good experience, we got to meet a lot of people," she says.

Cassandra was also conscious of the celebrity presence at the event. Style icon and Spice Girl-turned-fashion-designer Victoria Beckham was a judge at the catwalk event and one of the students managed to get a snap of her glancing around the displays, which included creations by talented Bradford graduates.

Fresh from that trip, Cassandra and her fellow students at Bradford College were busily preparing for their end-of-year fashion show. The spectacular catwalk event showcased 15 collections created by the college's Further Education and Higher Education students.

The show at the Yorkshire Craft Centre, based in the college, was indicative of the hard graft which goes into producing such fabulous and flamboyant collections. It was also testimony to the design talent that Bradford is producing.

Influenced by her style inspiration, iconic Sixties model Twiggy, and her love of retro and the Mod culture, Cassandra combined heavy fabrics, dark colours and cashmeres with more modern bold prints to produce a striking collaboration stamped with her personality.

"I wanted to make it quite modern and put my own personality into it," she says.

Originally from Dublin, she came to study in Bradford on recommendation of the fashion degree. Her next move is to the bright lights of London where she hopes to cut it as a fashion designer.

Says Cassandra: "It's really scary and it's really exciting. It's a new chapter and a new challenge in my life."

Many of the students' collections are inspired by music. Nichola Laws uses a mixture of prints and waterproof type material reflecting music festivals from Woodstock 69, to present-day Glastonbury. "I've been inspired by music, my father is a musician and I've been subjected to a lot of different types of music through my life," says Nichola, 23, from Shelf.

After completing her degree she plans to design women's or children's wear. Wherever her career takes her it will certainly be in fashion. "For me fashion is a form of expression. You can tell a lot about someone by what they wear and you can have a guess at the type of music they like."

Design student pals Sabrina Ahmed, 26, from Saltaire, and 23-year-old Lisa Fraser from Bradford are hoping to collaborate their designs.

The main influence for their individual collections is the use of fashion for keeping modern technology to hand, such as hooded tops and jackets designed to accommodate iPods for listening to music on the move.

"iPods are such a big thing and music is a massive trend within fashion so I thought I'd take advantage of that and bring it into my collection," explains Sabrina.

Lisa's designs are heavily influenced by American sports. "I started doing art at school and found it great but a bit pointless," she says. "With fashion there's a function in it rather than it being a creative piece on the wall. There's a whole industry around it."

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