Students from Limerick School of Art & Design who presented their annual fashion show this week chose the theme "LSAD on Top" to celebrate a year of notable successes for the department.
In the national Persil fashion competition, the school scooped the €10,000 prize for the fifth time. Graduate Sarah Ann Craven won the Harrods award in February for the most creative MA collection at London's Central St Martin's.
Her collection was displayed in Harrods windows for a fortnight.
"Such successes over the last 20 years have generated a huge amount of interest," said Richard Ruth, head of LSAD.
This year there were 600 applications for 150 places in the school's design and fine art courses, 200 more than the previous year.
"We interviewed 400 people this year. At a time when applications for art and design courses are dropping nationally because of demographics, we are holding our own."
The upbeat mood was certainly expressed in the exuberant, wacky but uneven, big-shouldered knits from the second years' "rock, rhythm and blues" project.
A bold sense of colour expressed itself in the third-year collections, too, most vividly in those of Mary Claire Kirwin, Carol Hopkins and Carolyn O'Sullivan, while Isabelle Phipps's gilded chiffon dresses had their own dreamy magic.
In the 16 degree collections, two stood out: Lisa Jane Aherne mixed printed cottons and ethnic shapes in a modern, light-hearted way, and Nicola Kennedy offered glorious, swagged knits and fresh combinations of old and new fabrics.
Angela Nevin's collection was a clever and sexy play on the colour orange, and Liza Foley shaped dark forms effectively in a thoughtful collection inspired by Schumann.
The new Dutch director of the Limerick Institute of Technology, Dr Maria Hinfelaar, who introduced the show, took the unusual and innovative step of selecting two recent graduates to design her outfit for the night, an effective way of highlighting their skills and creativity.
