Students at Scarborough’s St. Augustine’s School make final of nationwide Junk Kouture competition

The final of the Junk Kouture, the world’s largest sustainable youth fashion programme, is due to take place this autumn at Hackney Empire, London.

Three groups of students from the Catholic school will take their sustainable fashion creations to celebrity judges Laura Whitmore, Fabio Piras and Mehreen Baig.

The first group is named Seagulls Attack and includes Molly Murray, Laura Mason and Caitlin Ingham.

They say: “Our dress design is inspired by seagulls attacking people for food and leaving dirt behind. We got this idea because we live in a coastal town, and this was happening on a daily basis. Though they're generally harmless, seagulls can become aggressive quickly.

"Our design came to life from recycled materials which consist of cardboard for the wings, fluff from old bedding for the wings and old paper to make the head piece. To make the base of the skirt we used two of our sisters' old hoop skirts which came with a princess dress. To make the feathers on the dress we used old bubble wrap and cut them to shape which then we could thread a piece of old wire through to make it stand up."

The aim of the competition is to make fashion out of recycled materials to help promote a “cleaner and more sustainable environment”.

The second group is named Living Out of Bags and includes Lilly Green-Bain, Maryam Sadat, Mikolaj Truszkowski, Skye Wild and Moqaddas Yoldash.

They said: “We have chosen to design a dress recycling leftover plastic from refugee camps. Many people donated clothes, food and other items to refugees and the bags were left behind and we thought about reusing them.

“Our generation needs to find a way to reuse or recycle plastic bags because there are too many of them left on the fields. Traditional Afghan clothes are colourful and decorated with flowers or geometrical shapes, therefore we decided to follow our tradition and decorated the dress with Afghan patterns, melting pieces of colourful plastic bags into a flower or geometrical shapes.”

“We used large plastic bags and single use plastic shopping bags for the bottom part of the dress. We choose carrot sacks for the sleeves because of the matching colour and to add texture to the dress.”

The third group is ‘Exposure’, and includes Frankie Newton, Raine Robertson and Melissa Andrijevska.

She said: “Homelessness is still a large issue, not just locally but in all areas. Arguably a topic not discussed enough. In light of this, we created an outfit with old materials found locally, often left on streets as waste, such as bags, old tents, umbrellas and put them to better use.

“We took inspiration from multiple catwalk sensations over the years, using various techniques such as graffiti, making it unique and decided to focus on the theme of ‘the streets’. Our design highlights the struggles and feelings these situations may bring, adding some colour and shining a light, for they are not alone.”

“The dress is mainly composed of an old tent- sewn with different pieces together. The corset is made from reflective silver bubble wrap with zippers attached , and a plastic bag bringing it together. Our umbrella is made from the metal skeleton of a broken umbrella . The side collar accessory was an umbrella broken apart and manipulated into a new cohesive look reflecting the umbrella.”

The top 10 designs from the London City Final will be selected by the Junk Kouture judging panel for the World Final where they will compete with 50 other designs from Abu Dhabi, London, Paris, Milan and New York City.