Unveiling of the new Couture Lingerie range

So those of you that don't know about the buzz in the fashion world going on in my local home town on the Gold Coast, its a competition at Elsewhere on the Gold Coast & has been hosted by the master minds Michaela and Paige from PM Productions. So far there have been 3 rounds which i have featured in the last round and making it through to the finals which will be held at the same club in Surfers Paradise this weekend. There was a total of 18 South east based designers including myself and 3 out of each round were chosen to leave 9 of us to be featured in the Grand finale.

My range was sensationally planned, i had a total of 3 models who wore 3 of my newly made gowns, each gown was fitted with an outside zipper so as i could diamante them with swarovski hot fix crystals making this the feature of each dress. I also used contrasting satins underneath these dresses as a peek a boo type of scenario only seeing the fabric when the girls walked. Each of my designs was made for easy discarding of the dress so as my models could easily peel the dress off to reveal the stunning new range of couture lingerie i introduced in my round. I based my inspiration around the movie KILL BILL for my show, each model was in character and had there very own weapon of choice, there was a whip, a sword and also a real gun (with no firing pins) and each model used these props very well and moved in time with my song of choice which was BANG BANG (have a listen) check out the pictures!!

The Spirit of the Black Dress

Well what a fantastic few days I have been treated to as one of the top 10 designers for the official start of L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival... thanks to The Spirit of the Black Dress competition. A friend of mine who owns KODA Boutique and I stepped off our flight from brisbane and straight into an amazing world strikingly tall and statues models all 10 of them dressed in the 10 designers creations. When i seen my design on the model they had chosen to wear it i was blown away, all of the models then walked down to Flinders station which caused a stir of Media and by standers to stop and stare at these gorgeous beings posing for the press.

MelinaHollway on Sense of Fashion

MelinaHollway on Sense of Fashion

Ebony Affairs Gown

I decided to enter into the L'oreal Melbourne fashion festival's 2010 competition "Spirit of the Black Dress" In order to fit the criteria entrants had to design and make a dress using outlined specifics of a sustainability elements, so I decided to use recycled items including my fabric and beads and Green electricity to power my machines as well incorporating as much hand sewing to reduce my electricity usage...and as you can see there was a lot of hand sewing involved with this particular garment, the Decolletage or often referred to as my stone collars was entirely hand sew'en by me.

High Fashion Shoot

Recently I was approached by a very talented photographer by the name of Nadia Masot to attend a photo shoot she was doing in hopes of adding more high fashion images to her portfolio, naturally I went along as I am always keen to meet new people interested in fashion and add to my own folio. The end result from this shoot was unimaginable, the actual location was a run down abandoned old house in the bush that with a stiff breeze could of fell down at any second and the feeling that at any moment the likes of some homeless junkie could of jumped out at us, at the rear of the property was as i would describe a dirty swamp and a giant tree. The 2 gorgeous models Gabby and Cynthia we used did really well to battle inch ants mossies by the dozen and psyco spiders that lived in the old stone fire place we used...and all i could think about was "why did i have to watch so many scary movies" the sounds that i could hear were something out of "Wrong Turn" or the "Blair Witch Project". So when Nadia sent me a sneak peek of these images from our shoot you couldnt blame me for wanting to leap through my computer screen and explore this fantasy land, I had people emailing me asking if the location was a real place and if they could go there. Let the pictures speak for themselves