The Nokia Young Fashion Designer Award – The Story so Far

Now in its seventh year, the Nokia Young Fashion Designer Award (NYFDA) is the premier student design award in Ireland. The competition is part of the curriculum in many of the leading colleges across the country, as it offers final year fashion and design students an opportunity to showcase their talent and gain industry recognition. Previous winners have gone on to work within the fashion industry including Olivia Hegarty, who is working with Double M in the UK, John McCormack, now stocked in Design Centre in Dublin and Deirdre Brennan, who worked as assistant mainline designer with Joanne Hynes.

The Run Up to NYFDA 2010

For the NYFDA 2010, final year fashion and textile students across Ireland were asked to be inspired by Ovi.com, Nokia’s one-stop services portal. Ovi, which means door in Finnish, offered huge scope to the students for inspiration and they were encouraged to use everything from mapping to file and picture share to the Nokia Music Store for their designs. Our judges, who we will reveal later, trawled through almost 100 design note books and drawings to choose their top 20 finalists, who will go forward to create their garments and attend the live final in March.

Who Helped Them Along the Way?

This year, we were delighted to have leading Irish fashion and jewellery designer, Joanne Hynes, on board as student mentor. Joanne acted as a dedicated point of contact for the finalists, guiding them through the design process and addressing any queries they had on everything from fabrics to accessories. We held a special meet and greet event with Joanne and the 20 finalists in The Morrison Hotel earlier this month, which was a great success!