By Eithne Dodd | Jan 31 2017
Now in its 30th year, the 2017 UCD Fashion Show will take place on week 4.The Fashion Show is run out of the UCD Ents Office within UCDSU and provides an opportunity for students interested in fashion or modelling as well as raising money for a selected charity each year.As semester 2 begins, many various cogs for the show are already in place. The Fashion Show committee will be holding auditions this Tuesday and Wednesday (the 24th and 25th of January) in the Quad Room of the Student Centre.Also for the next four weeks, various fundraisers will be held for this year’s chosen charity; Jigsaw. Devin Finneran, Producer of the 2017 UCD Fashion Show said: “We looked at either struggles that students face or that they come across regularly. We shortlisted a number of charities but at the end Jigsaw were chosen.”“We felt that mental health, well-being and learning to look after yourself are huge issues amongst young people and we believe that this is a fantastic opportunity to both raise funds and awareness at the same time.”There is a huge amount of preparatory work done for the UCD Fashion Show each year. The show is overseen by Paul Kilgallon, the UCD Ents Manager and Jason Masterson, Student Centre Manager.After the producer is appointed in November and the committer interviews take place “the real work begins” as Finneran puts it. “From choosing a charity to drafting sponsorship proposals to theme development as well as staging and personnel recruitment it really is a huge production and those involved are highly committed to the task at hand”.“Between committee, crew, models, designers, photographers, judges, staff of UCD Student Centre and UCDSU we expect that roughly 250 people will be involved in an aspect of the Show from start to finish of the Show” said Finneran.There will be seven section in the show. For six of those sections, clothes are supplied by local retailers while the seventh is for the Young Designer section.The Young Designer Competition is open to students or recent graduates of fashion or design based disciplines of any third level institution in the country. Finneran said: “We receive a huge amount of entries for this competition each year and generally choose the finalists in house with the help of previous winners of the Award.”The big night of the show will be on Thursday the 16th of February which will be their Gala night when the awards for Model of the Year and Young Designer of the Year will be presented. While generally there is only one model of the year, agencies in the past few years have chosen to provide more than one contract on the night due to the quality of the student models.This year, the prizes haven’t yet been finalised. Finneran said “Generally a Year Model Contract for the Model of the Year. We are currently discussing terms with an agency regarding this”. The Young Designer of the Year will get a window display and a small ready to wear line to stock in a well-known retailer in Dublin city centre.Finneran expects 3000 people to attend pre and post Fashion Show events with 1500 people attending the actual show. Tickets will go on sale from week one in the SU shops and will cost €12 for a student and €15 for everyone else.