Wedding glamour for the HSC

Design and Technology student

Talia Kaur talks about her top-ranking creation materialistic society

BY RAJNI ANAND LUTHRA

When Talia Kaur attended a wedding not so long ago, she was fascinated with the white perfection in which the bride turned up. But as the wedding ceremony concluded and the party moved on to the reception, the observant Talia noticed that the bride seemed a bit weighed down by the large dress. Perhaps the dress could have been designed to be a two-in-one, Talia thought – a beautiful flowing gown for the wedding ceremony, which somehow converts into a cocktail dress for the party afterwards…

Within the next few months, Talia had created exactly such a ‘multi-function’ dress, all from scratch, as the major design project for her Design and Technology course in the 2011 HSC.

It won her the top mark in the

“I loved every minute of my year-long work with the dress,”

Talia, a Marrickville High student, Indian Link. “The portfolio that was supposed to go with it, was hard work but just as fun – all 70 pages of it!”

The seventeen-year-old described the three components that make up the dress.

“The cocktail dress is a simple boob-tube style which ends just above the knee. It’s in white of course, made with satin-backed shantung and a princess satin lining. The wedding skirt goes on top of it. It is a huge skirt which can be attached easily, and is made from different types of net. There’s a lining and then two layers of hard net, one layer of soft net tulle, and then two more layers of tulle with glitter. To cover the join, I created a pure satin sash in black, which is tied up in a bow at the back. The black waist band I thought added a modern feel to it all. For the head, I decided to do away with the traditional veil and designed a headpiece instead”.

The headpiece sits on the temple, and features a large white flower which Talia had specially flown in from a Paris milliner. It is attached to black feathers and black netting scrunched up at the back, all of it sitting on an oval base. It turned out to be the most enjoyable part of the whole exercise for Talia.

“Firstly it was easy to make –and being so small, there was room for error, whereas with the wedding dress I had to be really careful”.

The hardest bit was the cocktail dress.

“It had to be properly fitted and that was difficult to accomplish. The boning was hard to work with and so was the invisible zip”. But it all came together beautifully at the end.

“When my teacher saw it finally he loved it – he said it was a Band 6! I didn’t believe him, of course, I best”.

Talia first began to sew at the young age of ten, when her mum Harjit taught her to hem her own dresses.

“Mum used to work as a dressmaker, making dresses and handbags, so she got me started early!”

These days, Talia says, she prefers to create dresses.

And what did Mum think of the winning dress?

“She really liked it. She wasn’t too sure about the black aspect of it, being a wedding dress and all, but I explained to her that we were required to be creative and innovative. She’s ok with it now!”

Talia’s mark in the D&T exam, 98, contributed substantially to her overall ATAR of 92. She is now set to do a journalism degree at UTS.

“I’m passionate about writing –who knows, I might even take up fashion journalism!” Talia said with enthusiasm.