Something for a rainy day

Forget scouring the rolls of cloth in the local fabric store; Bachelor of Design (Fashion) third-year student Julia Bellamy collected fabric for her award-winning dress design from a different, unusual source - second-hand umbrellas.

The dramatic draped and boned garment caught the attention of the Fashion Quarterly Young Designer of the Year judges in 2006 who named her first runner up, second only to winner Jodie Webster, a recent graduate of the same Otago Polytechnic programme.