Participation in the Fashion Innovation Awards will be a huge boost to a fashion career. Shannon Fahy reports…
In today’s economic standing if you want a job, you’re going to have to build up your portfolio of experience in order to have any chance of being offered one. Fashion students attending Galway Technical Institute (GTI) are doing just that.
Orla Moore is a fashion design teacher at the school located on Fr. Griffin Road, and will be sending four of her students to the Irish Fashion Innovation

Awards to compete with other aspiring designers and present personally designed dresses. The Galway college has high hopes for their students as this is the fourth year in a row that they will be participating.
Claudia Taheny is a level 5 FETAC student who has taken the competition to a whole new level. Forget just creating a dress pattern, and proceeding to sew and stitch it together in such a manner that impresses and satisfies the judges’ cravings for talent. No, Claudia went that extra effort to even create her own fabric. With her, helping to represent Galway, is Aisling Kerr, Sabrina Fallon and Fiona Bulfin.
The competitors for this fashion event will be travelling from Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT), Ulster College of Art and Design (UCAD), and the National College of Art and Design (NCAD). And what is up for grabs? The title of Student Designer of the Year 2013.
Without a doubt, anyone pursuing a career in the fashion industry would benefit tremendously with this achievement under their bedazzled belt and scrolled onto their Curriculum Vitae.
These students will be following in the footsteps of Alexandra Carlos and Laura Jane Halton who also represented Galway in the competition in previous years.
Alexandra is now studying design at the London College of Fashion, and Orla Moore insists “that participation in the Irish Fashion Innovation Awards was a key factor in her [Alexandra] gaining her place at the top London college.”
So whether their style is retro, preppy, or anything in between, we wish them the best of luck in their endeavors, and let the best designer win.