By Mikayla van Loon
As the kid who was always drawing clothing designs and concepts on notepads instead of “princesses and rainbows”, Lilly Cavallin carried out her dream of becoming a fashion designer.
Embarking on a three year fashion design course at Box Hill Institute (BHI), the Ferntree Gully resident’s final collection saw her selected to participate in the Melbourne Fashion Week student show and walk away from BHI’s end of year show as a multi award winner.
Taking to the runway on Thursday 5 December, Lilly and her classmates, alongside hospitality and floristry students, put on an evening not to forget in celebration of their study completion.
Using sustainable fashion practices to design her OMIT collection, Lilly said she really wanted to highlight the substantial amount of waste that occurs in the fashion industry.
“I really wanted to omit nothing and use everything, so I wasn’t walking away with this massive footprint when leaving behind my collection,” she said.
Drawing on her and her friend’s passion for the automotive industry the idea of going to a scrapyard came up.
“I was really thinking about how these scrapyards exist, so you can go in and grab a headlight or hubcap or anything you need but the leather in the car seats are being left behind and perishing,” Lilly said.
Having always had “a passion for using leathers” Lilly said it required trial and error throughout her first two years at BHI.
“In my first year, I used real goat suede. But then I found there was a little pushback from people who didn’t want to have the use of actual animal fabrics.
“So in my second year, I used polyester leathers, but then I found while I was sewing it, because I was touching it so much and manipulating the fabric, that it was starting to perish.
“I found this really double ended sword where you use animal leathers, which is more durable, but then you have the pushback of people not wanting it to be animal leathers, and then you use synthetic leathers, which perish quicker, and that are made out of polyesters and oils, so that can actually be worse for the environment, leading into a toxic runoff.”
Heading to a scrapyard in Kilsyth to salvage old car seats, Lilly was on a path to creating the designs she had envisioned.
Because of the panelled effect of car seats, however, Lilly said she had to design her garments in a similar way, working with the structure of the fabric.
“It was a little bit challenging. I enjoyed the challenges. It was fun to think creatively about how to work around that,” she said.
Sustainability was woven into every facet of Lilly’s concept, using state of the art technology called Browzwear, to virtually create her patterns and visualise the final product.
“It takes about 20 samples before a garment is even able to be made to send to a shop. So those samples, what do you do with them? Do you sell it as a second? But you still have those materials and stuff left behind.
“We’ve always been taught from day one to think about sustainability and how we can use sustainability to not leave as much of a massive footprint. That’s why we started using Browzwear, a virtual technology to pattern make and sew all of our garments digitally, so that reduces the amount of Calico samples we have to make.”
It was Lilly’s expert use of this technology that gained her the Digital Design Award at the BHI Odyssey Fashion Show.
“It was amazing to get that award, just to show my hard work in doing all my garments on Browzwear and a lot of my fabrics I used in my garments weren’t actually in the Browzwear library. I used carbon fibre, which technically isn’t really a fashion fabric,” she said.
“So when the Browzwear team actually came out to do a workshop, they brought all their fabric scanning machines and I was giving them my samples, so it’s amazing to see them actually put it in their library as well and future designers can use it.”
On the night, Lilly was also crowned the Runway Award winner, picked as the favourite collection of the night by RAW, which landed her an internship at the label.
Post-study, Lilly has some exciting opportunities ahead in 2025, starting a full-time position with brand Thomas Cook.
“They’ve really supported me throughout my whole three years. In my first year, I started as an intern, and then in my second year, they offered me a part time job as just an assistant.
“Next year, they offered me a job as a design assistant. So that’s an amazing opportunity. They are country wear and I like more street wear stuff, so it’s amazing to stay with them and have a full time job with them, I’m very grateful.
“But I’m looking forward to the opportunity with RAW and learning how both companies work.”
