Hayley Dawson is one of six fashion graduates selected to take part in The Innovators show at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia 2014.
This is how she describes her major collection:
My original inspiration was Amelia Earhart. I read a book about her years ago and her story stuck with me.
To me, she embodied determination and confidence; she went up against all the odds and achieved her dreams, even though so many people were against it.
With her as my muse, I looked to all things aviation; actual aircraft, uniforms worn and even the art of making paper planes.
I'm drawn to simple streamlined silhouettes so I fused these ideas together and formed a kind of utility vs. minimalism collection.
I'm not an embellishment fan and I don't like fussy details.
I think there is beauty in simplicity, so a lot of my pieces are quite basic, but I always aim to use interesting textures and fabrics to give the garments character.
I'm a huge fan of leather and that really shows in this collection.
The cuts are quite crisp and structured throughout, but there is a strong relaxed element as well.
Wearability was my aim when designing this collection, I constantly asked myself "would I wear this?". If the answer was no, then it didn't make the cut.
The process for this collection has been interesting because it started way back in April last year, when I designed my 6 look capsule range for our TAFE graduation.
Being selected for The Innovators show meant I could build on that, which was great but also tricky.
I obviously needed to design looks that were cohesive, but I also had more room to move and experiment. So that was a challenge to find a happy medium.