Erin’s scarf hits the shelves

A WOMAN from South-East Clare was one of three winners of a design competition run by one of the country’s best-known department stores and a website for young designers.
Erin McClure from Killaloe was this week named the winner of the betafashion.com scarf design competition, in association with Arnotts, and will see her design produced and sold exclusively in Arnotts.
“It is a massive honour to be stocked in Arnotts. Arnotts is a fabulous shop and it is very exciting to see the scarves made and in the shop. It was really exciting to see them in the shops on Tuesday. I have never sold anything commercially. Obviously in college we are always doing designs but I never got to see them for sale, so it is a really big deal,” Erin told The Clare Champion.
There were over 100 entrants to the competition through betafashion.com, with only three winners picked. Votes were placed through betafashion.com and the Arnotts Department Store Facebook page. The entrants with the highest number of votes from each of these won.
The other two competition winners are young Irish designers Niamh McCartney and Pamela Quinn. Each of the winners won €350 and got their silk scarves stocked in the famous department store.
“I am still in college so I have never won anything like this before. It is brilliant,” Erin said.
Twenty-four-year-old Erin is a final-year textiles student in the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin. Her design was inspired by wild gorse flowers and created by combining cloud, sky and floral photography.
Niamh is 29 and from Ardee, Louth. She is a freelance women’s wear designer and also attended NCAD from 2004 to 2008. Her design was inspired by bright florals in tropical colours, using an ombre effect to give the feeling of looking at a sunset.
Thirty-year-old Pamela from Donnybrook in Dublin is a graduate of textile design from NCAD. After graduating from the college in 2004, Pamela was a designer at well-known textile design studios in London and New York, before working as a design consultant at a trend forecasting agency in Paris.
“We wanted to create something more interactive for young and emerging textile designers, whereby they could submit their designs and the winners would see their work produced and sold exclusively in Arnotts. Betafashion.com provided the perfect fit for this.
“The voting mechanism was very fair, as it was the public who decided on the winners and not a panel of judges. I am thrilled with the three winning designs and we are delighted to have the scarves arriving in store this week. I think they will prove to be very popular,” according to Lisa Stanley, accessories buyer for Arnotts.
Betafashion.com was started by Simon Morgan and Michael Wilson-Wright to give budding young designers a head start in the fashion industry. Knowing how notoriously difficult the fashion industry is to crack for young designers, they realised the wealth of talent that must be out there going to waste.
They wanted to create a platform where young designers could earn money and gain exposure, while simultaneously creating a business that would be viable.
“We decided to create Beta, a brand born out of idea of bringing the designer and customer together on a single competition-based platform. where the fashion-conscious shopper plays an integral part in the brand’s direction,” Simon  commented.