Celebration

The New Era of Design: Raffles Celebrates One Year

Fardin Akbar Hyderi
Photos : Kazi Tahsin Agaz Apurbo

On April 14, 2011, Raffles Design Institute was established with the aim to bring in a new dimension to education. It is one of the owned subsidiaries of Raffles Education Corporation with a network of 35 colleges in the Asia Pacific region including Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Cambodia. Last week, on April 7, 2012, the students and teachers celebrated the first year since the institution's inception. However, unlike most clichéd anniversary celebrations, they had decided to put on a fashion show, portraying the institute's innovative creativity in all aspects of design, including fashion, graphic, interior and more.

The show was held at the Westin Hotel in Gulshan, Dhaka, and Mr Obaidul Quader, the Minister of Communication, Bangladesh, was the Chief Guest of the event while Mr Daryl Lau, Consul, Republic of Singapore, was the Special Guest. The 'get up' of the show was more aristocratic than most with a semi formal dress code for the viewers. The students from different departments were involved in one way or another to make the fashion show a memorable one. Starting from the designing of the invitation cards by the Visual Communication Department to the spectacular apparels designed by the Fashion Design Department, students from each department were involved in making the fashion show a glamorous event.

The theme of the event revolved around combining different styles of fashion. 'To the trenches' was the name of the first fashion show organised by the students only, and was a military theme. The second fashion show was called the 'Rickshawala' which was designed by Lorena Mariscal, Lecturer of the Fashion Design Department and winner of the European Fashion Week.

Terence Tan, College Director, Raffles Institute of Higher Education exclaimed, "I am very proud of the hard work which my students have put into this event. Since this is the first of many years of Raffles Institute in Dhaka, we decided to show the dedication of the faculty members and the sweat and tears our students put into their work through out their first year in one big magnificent show. We wish to attract more students in the coming years and establish a campus of Raffles in this city."

Musarrat Rahman, a student from the Fashion Design Department, said, "We have been working hard for the past three months on our designs for this show. We could not have done it without the help of our lecturers, especially Lorena Mariscal and Stanislav Botonogov. I received great responses about my designs and I hope to do better in the future."

Clearly, the fashion show inspired the young people present at the event. It seems like Raffles has just started out on, what looks like, a fantastic journey in Bangladesh!