CIVIL rights pioneer Rosa Parks, recycling and road safety were among the more quirky inspirations for fashion collections paraded on the catwalk at Bradford College yesterday.

Graduating fashion students from Bradford School of Art showcased their creative, extravagant and edgy designs to family, friends, staff, students and fashion industry figures at a series of three shows in the college.

Many of the students were inspired by hot button issues of the day, and among the dramatic designs on show this year were garments made from charity shop-sourced denim jeans, gender neutral outfits and cardboard animal heads.

The collections were created by students on the BA (Hons) Fashion degree, HNC Fashion and Textiles course and the Access to HE programme and all won huge applause from the fashion-loving audience when they were shown off in the college’s Lister Building.

Iram Hussain was among the students seeing their designs take centre stage. Her collection is called Rosa, and was inspired by racial equality.

She said: “My concept is based on the civil rights movements. I decided to look into a key figure from the past movements and chose to look at Rosa Parks. I also looked at the Black Lives Matter.

“The silhouettes of the garments incorporate femininity with oversized hoodies. All the fabrics were bought to keep in line with the darkness of the outfits and the hint of yellow was used to represent a colour used in both past and present movements.”

Hi-Viz was the name of Husain Patel’s gender neutral collection.

He said: “My collection is based on combining my love of urban streetwear with road safety elements to create a unisex collection which is both aesthetically pleasing and practical.”

Thandiwe Eagleton’s collection, called Merged, focuses on sustainability, a particularly topical issue in the fashion industry. She said: “The production of fabrics is ruining the environment because of the chemicals used. I decided I would like to see more designers making sustainable clothing and it starts with me.”

Dance of Death was the title of Zahra Mahmood’s women’s wear collection inspired by bullfighting, ballet, surrealism and manipulation.

And Aishah Khan’s collection, Unpredicable, was based on water with PVC plastic representing water and ruffles to represent rushing water.

Work by final year students from numerous courses at Bradford School of Art and Northern School of Creative Industries are currently on display to the public in an exhibition in the college’s Dye House Gallery until next Friday (June 15).

Entry to the gallery is free. For more details see the Bradford College website.

Work on display during the exhibition’s week long run includes pieces from students on degree courses in visual arts, graphic design, textiles, fine art, interior design, photography, media make-up with special effects and fashion.