North Shore Times (New Zealand)
Coffee sacks turned suit, wins top prize
The age-old rivalry between siblings has turned Chantelle Reilly into an award-winning designer with an outfit made of coffee sacks.
The Westlake Girls High School students started designing clothes six years ago when her older brother entered a Trash to Fashion competition.
‘‘Little kid me was like ‘I want to do better than my brother’ so I thought I would enter it,’’ Reilly said.
The 17-year-old discovered her love for all things fashion by entering the competition and had been creating outfits ever since.
‘‘I discovered through sewing I could make anything I wanted,’’ Reilly said.
Her latest garment, a threepiece mens suit, won her the Macca Lodge recycled outfit award and the Bernina Award of Excellence in the school section of the Hokonui Fashion Design Awards held in Gore on July 29.
Reilly said she was ‘‘pretty stoked’’ to come away with the top award in her category as there was ‘‘a very high standard’’ of outfits from other young designers.
Her outfit was made completely from sustainable products including coffee sacks, a tyre tube and rusted bottle tops.
‘‘I wanted to make something that was clearly a waste product into a thing that didn’t look like waste – like a high quality garment,’’ the Westlake Girls High School student said.
Five coffee sacks created the pants, jacket and waist coat. The
‘‘I discovered through sewing I could make anything I wanted.’’ Chantelle Reilly
tyre tube created the belt and bottle tops created the jacket buttons.
She said she created two holes in each bottle top to be able to sew them onto the jacket.
The outfit took about one month’s worth of free time to create and its sustainability was the most important factor, Reilly said.
‘‘Through doing Trash to Fashion, I learnt that you don’t need to use new fabric or anything. With it being sustainable, it means a lot more to be able to reuse things than use new things.’’
She said she mostly worked on the outfit herself but her mother who had a lot of knowledge about sewing helped with the technical elements.
Reilly said she wanted to study fashion after high school and work within the fashion industry.
‘‘It’s the only thing that I really love so I know it’s something I want to do,’’ she said.