Student designer conjures up Shangri-La look to win award

Shangri-La inspired the vibrantly colourful winning collection of tapestry prints, leggings with bells on and ethnic-style flat hats at a London College of Fashion catwalk show.

Student Wun Wun Nova Chiu conjured up the fictional paradise, from James Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizon, with a host of haberdashery, and took the shapes of her silhouettes, she said, from Chinese architecture.

Embellishment was all when it came to the headgear - and also to the tulip-shaped dresses, many of them decorated with silver beads and crafted using brightly coloured brocade.

Chiu was joined on the winner's podium at The Studio in Paddington last night by fellow students Charlotte Barry and Stine Riis. Ms Barry, studying textiles, clinched the award for best trimmings with her amazingly detailed series of dresses, while Ms Riis's sophisticated offering of fur coats and torn-silk cigarette trousers won her the prize for best use of silks. The brave final collection of the show, however, was among the most exciting.

Graduate Angela Brandys was inspired by "punks of the future", and presented plastic capes trimmed with fluorescent fur, tights detailed with panels of snakeskin and oversize bell-shaped dresses cut from cracked PVC.

"My collection explores a 'real' tension of new fabric, texture and colour arrangements" said Brandys, 22, of Shoreditch, who completed a work placement with designer Pam Hogg while working towards her degree. "But my designs are garments I must want to wear."

London College of Fashion is known for its dedication to educating students on the vocational requirements essential for a lengthy career in fashion, and at the latest show, it was evident that this teaching has paid off.

Of the 25 collections unveiled, almost every one demonstrated a masterful balance of creativity and commerciality.

The most wearable clothes came from Lien Bui - who sent out a series of draped-silk dresses which would not have looked out of place on a catwalk in Milan or Paris - and from Harold Kensington who, with a stunning slouch-shouldered coat, demonstrated a superior understanding of outerwear.