Junk Kouture brings floppy disks back into fashion!

The mention of a floppy disk casts one’s mind back to the computer era of the ‘eighties and ‘nineties – but a group of Tuam students have found a unique modern-day use for them.

For the past few months a group of TY students from Presentation College, Tuam have been collecting old floppy disks from various sources – and the end result has been a digital-themed dress.

Their innovative creation has resulted in them making it through to the national finals of Junk Kouture where their ‘dress’ will be modelled at the 3 Arena in Dublin next month.

The five students – from Milltown, Kilconly, Kilbannon, Cahergal and Turloughmore – are delighted that they made it through the regional finals of the competition.

Student Eimear Fahy explained that as part of TY, every group got an opportunity to enter Junk Kouture in which students get an opportunity to design a piece of clothing or fashion made from recycled materials.

“We recently did up our computer room and found that there was lots of old computer parts that were going to be thrown out so instead we took the initiative to use these materials to design a digital-themed dress.

“So far, we have used approximately 500 parts mostly sourced from the computer room. However,we anticipate to develop the dress even more before the final, so we were hoping to get as many floppy disks as possibly as they don’t go far.

Apart from Eimear, the other students are Ciara O’Callaghan (who will be modelling the dress), Dervla Brogan, Emma Barry and Lauren Carre.

“To enter, we had to send photos of the dress, a summary of the dress, a description explaining our concept, the music we would need for the regional final and the materials we used. All that was fed into the Junk Kouture app,” Eimear added.

Once the girls found out they had got through to the regional finals, they faced one week of online voting which amounted to ten per cent of the results. The regionals took place last week at The Helix in Dublin.

There, 82 dresses went on display in the western region alone. Each model had to walk down the catwalk and preform a one-minute routine to showcase their creation.

Sixteen dresses were chosen by a panel of judges to go through to the national final on April 19. “We were lucky enough to be one of them,” Eimear admitted.