A FINAL year fashion design student, from Daws House, near Launceston, struck gold at the world’s biggest student catwalk events.

A former Launceston College student, Hazel Symons is now studying at De Montfort University. She was selected by judges out of 1,000 student representatives from 40 universities to receive the Christopher Bailey gold award by Oracle during the 25th Graduate Fashion Week (GFW) ceremony.

Packaging and pattern cutting inspired Hazel’s winning designs and the panels that make up the garments fit together like Lego — with each being precise to 2mm in order to fit together.

Hazel said: “My collection was inspired by packaging design because boxes are fully deconstruct-able and reconstruct-able.

“The overall concept is like a Lego store, so you would go in, pick out what panels you wanted, buy the required washers, screws and hardware, pick up some instructions, and take it home and make it yourself.

“Some garments are more complex to construct and so they need a longer construction time, however, no garment takes longer to construct than a normal piece of IKEA furniture (Yes, I timed it!). The longest piece to construct was the trench coat, as it took nearly four hours in total.”

Hazel has received a £10,000 prize for her collection of inventive monochrome pieces with seams that were bolted rather than sewn.

Hazel is a final year student and will be graduating at the end of July. She told the Post that the prize money she received will be saved until she decides to do an MA Degree, and until then she hopes to continue to work and learn something new.