Kieran Higgins, Bachelor of Design (Fashion), 2009

Kieran Higgins’ first foray into fashion design was an attempt to solve a personal style dilemma – he couldn’t find any t-shirts that suited his tastes, so he started designing and printing his own.

Several years later, Higgins has completed his Bachelor of Design (Fashion) at Otago Polytechnic. His DIY attitude and desire to stand out from the crowd are still very much in evidence in his final collection, a series of outfits in which finely-detailed designs screen-printed onto silk shine through perforations in black leather jackets and trousers.

“I moved towards the idea of trying to bring things together that wouldn’t normally be associated with one another.” The major inspiration for the collection was the concept of duality, Higgins says, from binary code to yin-yang and, in particular, the relationship between light and darkness.

“From that starting point I moved towards the idea of trying to bring things together that wouldn’t normally be associated with one another,” he says.

“Black leather always carries associations – the motorcyclist, the musician, connotations of danger and ‘cool’. Silk carries different associations – it’s a very glamorous, luxurious, expensive item.”

The complicated leatherwork involved in producing this effect would not have been simple to create using traditional methods, so Higgins decided to take advantage of the powerful laser cutter which is one of the tools available at the Polytechnic’s Product Development Centre.

It was the first time the laser cutter had been used for leatherwork, but Higgins says it was the ideal method for making his ideas come to life. “I’d never seen a machine that can achieve that level of detail. As soon as I found out the school had one, I just had to get my hands on it.

“A lot of people couldn’t get their heads around the fact that I’d spent all this money on this beautiful high quality leather and that my plan was to cut holes out of it!” he laughs, but as he enters an industry that places a premium on innovation, Higgins hopes that his penchant for risk-taking will be rewarded.