First year Fashion duo shine at Hokonui awards

First year Bachelor of Design (Fashion) student Kathryn Holloway (27) won the New World Gore Sustainable Excellence Award on Saturday night and was Highly Commended in the Country Living Open Winter Solstice category..

While Kathryn wasn’t able to attend the flagship Hokonui Gala Awards in Gore in person, she was enjoying watching the live stream at her flat with a good friend when she was announced as a winner.

“Hearing my name be called was a very shocking and exciting feeling,” says Kathryn.

“When I won the Sustainability award, I started jumping up and down and screaming in the living room with my friend.. It was hard to process how I was feeling.”

Kathryn admits she’s still on a “happy buzz” and is very proud of what she created, with her design inspired by her love of swimming and free diving

“I made my garment for myself, so it’s pretty cool the judges liked it has much as me!”

Meanwhile, fellow first year fashion student Ben Rouse (18) won the Van De Water Jewellers Open Androgynous Award for his military wear-inspired design, which he says is a huge result especially in his first year of study.

“It means a lot to me to see my work being appreciated by other people - not just myself - as it’s definitely hard sometimes to reassure myself on my designs and work,” says Ben.

“Specifically, winning the Androgynous section is a huge achievement because I definitely put myself in the category of designing for not one specific gender.

“I was really impressed with how my outfit turned out given it was the first design project I’d completed.”

(All catwalk/model photos courtesy of Still Vision Photography)

It was a clean sweep for Otago Polytechnic students in the Open Androgynous category, with Bachelor of Design (Honours) student Socrates Catapang named as Runner Up and first year Charlotte Somerville Highly Commended.

Otago Polytechnic was also proud to partner with iD Dunedin as Silver sponsors, offering the Otago Polytechnic iD Dunedin School Sustainable Excellence Award to a secondary school student, as a way of helping encourage sustainable fashion designing,

Emily Robertson from Whanganui Girls' College was selected as the winner at Friday night’s Strictly Design Show, for her School from the Earth entry.

Professor Margo Barton, Academic Leader for Fashion at Otago Polytechnic, says the Hokonui Fashion Awards is a great place to observe the emerging secondary school fashion talent from across Aotearoa NZ, and thought the entries this year were “simply outstanding”.

“These talented young folk are our future fashion students and of course, future fashion professionals and we’re delighted to play a part in encouraging them,” she says.

“Emily entered with a beautifully thought out and constructed look featuring an embroidered blanket and some very ingenious pattern cutting.

“It was a real treat to see the array of talent and their commitment to sustainability,” says Margo.

She now has the “dreadfully hard job” of selecting around 15 talented Hokonui secondary school designers, who will get the opportunity to showcase their designs on the catwalk at next year’s iD Dunedin Fashion Show in March 2027.


Special thanks also go to Pip Beaton and Julie Davies from the Fashion School who this year mentored 18 ākonga to enter the awards (with the assistance of subsidised entry fees from OP).