Winning designs

The competition was organised by the Thai edition of the global magazine and Central Embassy.
Piyawan Leelasompop, vice president for marketing, Central Department Store, noted that the designers taking part in the project had a chance to learn from reallife experience working with fashion experts. 
“This project plays an important role in supporting new generation designers to have a platform to showcase their skills in designing, branding and marketing. A project like this helps groom new designers to become Asia’s rising stars in the future, as well as promotes the fashion industry in Thailand internationally,” Piyawan said.

Duang Poshyanonda, editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar Thailand, added: “Harper’s Bazaar has worked with many world-class brands and top retail stores. We share the same vision as Central Embassy in supporting Thai and Asian designers, encouraging them to become well known, have a strong brand of their own, and succeed in the fashion world. Our strength is that Harper’s Bazaar is a leading fashion magazine with a presence in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. In the future, this project will be joined by other editions, such as India and Vietnam, making it even more successful.”
The project, which kicked off in May, drew a total of 226 designers, both university students and regular individuals, aged between 20 and 29. The Harper’s Bazaar team whittled them down to 60 then in the next round chose the 10 to go through to the semi-final.
The four finalists were Wiwat with his collection “Wake up Daydreamer”, Thongrachata Thanakunakorn for “Dream Island”, Chulalongkorn University’s Kridipat Charoenchaipiyakul for “Enormously Pretty", and Treeratat Thaninbenjakul for “Il Mio Amore” Each of them produced five outfits for the models to wear on the runway. The panel of judges for the national competition chose Wiwat as the winner and Treeratat as the runner up. 
Wiwat was excited and honoured to be named the winner. “My collection was inspired by the Victorian adventure novel ‘Alice's Adventures in Wonderland’ and was challenging to interpret. Another challenge was to make the final outfit because I used tulle, which is very delicate,” he said.
Runner-up Theeratat said the inspiration for his collection came from the sculptures and statues in Cimitero Monumentale di Milano. “The mix of contrasting materials, along with careful work on traditional Italian tailoring techniques create contemporary silhouettes and volumes, for an overall bold, but sophisticated image, which is playful but dramatic at the same time,” he said.
The event wrapped with a special show from NARS cosmetics and LOOKSI.com.