Manika joined HCC in 2012 when she was just eight years old. After years of hardwork and dedication, she is now in her senior year of a Bachelor’s Degree in Fashion Design. In March, as part of her senior project, she designed looks for a public fashion show. (Manika center right in photo above.)
In her own words…
In December 2024, the official date for the IEC designers runway, also known as The Graduation Show, was announced for 29th of March. This announcement shook our hearts and let us ride the roller coaster of emotions. All our learnings of the past few years would be showcased in the show.
We were matched in small groups to work together and started by researching for the inspirations and themes for our show. After going through many processes, we decided to go with the theme “Celestial Tides” which represents the waves and the sparkles of the night sky. The beauty of the sea lets us explore the world of the ocean. Our theme was blue and the shades of blue. Our principal agreed on he theme and we started working on the designs. We roughly sketched 50 designs and discussed thoroughly with our teachers.
All the designs and theme works took us a good two months. We then went for fabric hunting and we visited every single store on New Road in Kathmandu. Getting a good fabric that could match our vision took us a week. Once we were only two weeks from the show, we were working day and night without rest. Sometimes, the raw materials would get finished or would need more or more ideas to grow and we would divide into two teams and one team would go to a new road to take the materials and one team would work on the patterns. On the 15th of March, we had a prejudgment day where the judges would check our final designs on the garments and check the fittings on the models. After, we received many feedbacks from our teachers we had many adjustments to make before the show. Working without any rest and so much pressure on our head, we were working so hard we would lose track of time and forget to have our meals.
