A win in the Australian Wool Innovation Wool4Skools competition has inspired a New South Wales student to pursue a career in the fashion industry.

Year 10 Kinross Wolaroi School student Clancy Davies-Etheridge has won her section in the competition with a design featuring mid-sixties model, actress and singer Lesley Lawson, otherwise known as Twiggy.

Clancy’s entry, Twiggy Unexplained, gave the school its second consecutive win in the Year 10 section of the AWI competition. Year 10 student Sophie Aylward won for the school last year.

Clancy said she would love to pursue a career in the fashion industry.

“I think it would be a really good career and I would love the creative side of it.

“I love the concept of designing and all of the experimentation that goes with it.”

Clancy said she entered the Wool 4 Skool competition as part of a Year 10 textiles project.

“Seeing Sophie win definitely made me work harder to design something that was original and unique but something that also met the brief and used Merino wool in an innovative way.”

AWI said the fashion design competition this year received 1040 very high quality entries from 10,000 registered students from 400 participating schools.

The theme of “Woolmark in 50 years of fashion” engaged students from years 7 to 11 who designed for their favourite era from the 1960s to today.

Judges were impressed by the level of detail and knowledge of wool fabrics and innovations within entries, particularly across the younger year levels. Complementing classroom resources of free fabric and wool samples were lesson plans, teacher resources, technical specifications and fashion tips within a resource library at www.wool4skool.com.

Winning students and teachers this year share $10,000 in cash prizes along with Girlfriend magazine prize packs. The Year 11 winner also wins a week-long fashion internship with award-winning Australian designers Camilla and Marc.

The Year 10 winning entry from Clancy will be made into reality by leading designer Jonathan Ward and feature in a fashion shoot for Girlfriend magazine. Last year’s winner Sophie Aylward managed to meet the Duchess of Cambridge, who inspired her entry. Her journey is captured on video on watch on YouTube here.

Wool4skool 2014 winners and their final creative illustrations:

Year 11: Christine Zhou, Methodist Ladies College, Melbourne, VIC

Year 10: Clancy Davies-Etheridge, Kinross-Wolaroi School, Orange, NSW

Year 9: Vivian Tang, St Mary’s Star of the Sea, Wollongong, NSW

Year 8: Hannah Jenkins, Elderslie High School, Narellan, NSW

Year 7: Cindy Kieu, St Dominic’s Priory College, Adelaide, SA

Teacher: Anna Dyer, Belridge Secondary College, Beldon, WA

State finalists and honourable mentions: Click here to view the full list.

Clancy said her family once ran Merino sheep on their sheep station, but going through the design process gave her an understanding of how versatile the product is.

She said she has become aware of how many different ways wool can be treated and woven, knitted or felted and bonded to create so many unique properties.

“The whole array of new innovations that Merino wool can undergo to be made into the best product possible also fascinated me.”

The most fun aspect of the competition was coming up with designs to fit the Wool4Skool theme of 50 Years of fashion, she said.

“From my initial design I was able to figure out how I could change and improve the design and experiment with all different designs and rendering techniques.

“I used Photoshop as well to create my boards and layout and using ICT made the process even more of a learning curve,” she said.

“Searching for what sort of Merino materials and techniques that would best represent my design was also fun and enabled me to ultimately create and design the garments that I did.”

Year 10 teacher Megan Coombes said it was the second year she decided to make Wool4Skools part of the Year 10 Textiles Technology class.

“I thought that using it as a unit to introduce the properties of a fibre like Merino wool, while still being able to introduce concepts such as the principles and elements of design was a perfect way to start the year.

“Our students are rural students who predominately come from farming backgrounds so the premise of this competition appealed to them greatly.”

Megan said students had to create the work for the competition submission and collect all the background supporting documentation, such as individual learning journals, research and theory task books.

“The competition works well for me because it helps to support the important theory that the students need to cover during the year.

“I also was able to introduce them to ICT to enhance their design work extensively using CAD programs such as Photoshop to enhance their engagement,” she said.

“This was a great unit to do this with as they were able to explore the principles in various forms of design.”