Leicestershire student Charlotte Williams has won a national award and a £1,500 prize for her digitally printed textiles for interior furnishings, as well as a chance of starting out on her dream career.
Charlotte, 22, from Wigston, was awarded the Graham & Brown Award at the prestigious annual New Designers exhibition in London, and was also awarded a three week work placement at studios of the renowned interiors firm Graham & Brown.
Graduating BA (Hons) Textile Design at a ceremony at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, on Monday, Charlotte won the accolade for her a collection based on the concept of Wonderland; imagination and dreams, and was competing against hundreds of other textile students from around the UK.
Charlotte said: “This theme used an eclectic range of imagery such as birds, flowers, frames, and keys and I experimented with both placement, repeat, and colour following interior design trend predictions and my finished collection was a series of conversational prints of varying scale with geometric coordinates.”
Of her success, Charlotte said: “This has made me more ambitious and more confident knowing my work has been recognised. It is an incredible opportunity to work with Graham & Brown in-house with their other designers. This is the perfect ending to three years hard work and makes it all worthwhile.
“It is my ambition to work in the kind of environment that I will be experiencing at Graham and Brown's and have also been offered a number of interviews for either freelance or in- house design so winning this award is very exciting and looks set to help me achieve my dream career,” said Charlotte.
New Designers judges said: “We love Charlotte’s Wonderland theme. Her digital prints have a wonderful, hand-drawn, screen-printed feel. We like the pattern-filled areas, mini-prints and geometric co-ordinates to the main poppy design.”
For more information about New Designers where the UK’s newest design talents showcase their work to prospective employers, see: www.newdesigners.com.
Charlotte will graduate at a ceremony where Nick Robertson, boss of fashion dot com success ASOS, is receiving and honorary doctorate. TV presenter Paul O’Grady will also receive an honorary doctorate from DMU later next week.
Fellow DMU student Kevin Scott, from Scotland, was runner up in the New Designer of the Year award at New Designers with his folding bike design.
