He is the first young Fijian to have pursued undergraduate studies in fashion design abroad and this week Laisiasa Davetawalu graduated with great results, which all began when he joined a Fiji Fashion Week student competition.
Like many artistically inclined high schoolers, Laisiasa did not see many options for the kind of future he wanted.
But on the very day he left Queen Victoria School in 2016 he landed at the Fiji Fashion Week office with no money but very clear convictions about the future in the fashion he wanted.
The native of Nabukelevu in Kadavu who won Student Designer and Emerging Designer awards at FJFW, will now pursue a career in Australia.
“It’s a bachelor’s degree in fashion from The Fashion Design Studio at TAFE New South Wales. It just feels so good to be done because I had been working so hard all the time, at home, at school, 24/7 towards this. I still remember the first day I arrived, my eyes were everywhere. Everything was so new and so foreign. There were many things I had never seen before,” Laisiasa said.
“Now I’m settled and I’m ready for real challenges. Apart from this qualifications, my studies have changed me in that I’ve grown so much as a person physically, mentally and the work has helped me to be a strong person.”
As he completed his final two years of high school at Sigatoka Methodist High School on the Coral Coast, Laisiasa was by his own admission very shy, very soft, and always kept a distance from people but after winning the FJFW Student Designer Competition in his second year of entering and eventually the FJFW Designer of the Year Category while only 21 years old, the fashion designer says earning his degree has empowered him.
While he credits FJFW managing director Ellen Whippy-Knight for his entry into Australian life and the success of his education, Laisiasa said the Student Designer Competition was where it all began.
“The competition put me on a different level. When I first filled out that form to enter that first competition, my parents didn’t even know that I was in Suva. They found out when they saw me in The Fiji Times. After that competition, people started looking at me in a different way. They were like, Oh, he’s got talent! My parents too started to see the light.”
At the national level, students contacted Laisiasa to share that his story inspired and directed them toward fashion too.
In 2016, Ms Whippy-Knight set up a foundation to raise funds in the Fijian community in Australia with the goal of taking down under the winners of the FJFW Emerging Designer of the Year Award to formalise their studies.
Fijians who had found success in Australia, many of whom had migrated decades ago but still considered Fiji home, fundraised over the duration of a typical undergraduate studies program. Laisiasa was the first recipient of that commitment.
“After almost four years of fundraising and seeking community support to help pay for his university fees which was a total of $A65,000 ($F102,242) we are so grateful that he pulled through and he showed that he was worth the support,” Ms Whippy-Knight said.
“There’s so many people in the Fijian community to thank, especially Mark Halabe, Lisa Apted, Jon Apted and many more in Australia. Our neighbours, his university friends, and so many friends from Fiji all came together to ensure that Laisiasa made it.”
She is confident that Laisiasa will go onto bigger things in the design industry “because he is so detailed in his attention to fashion work. He is absolutely one of a kind, he loves and lives for what is fashion.
He has made all of us in Fiji and Australia very proud and is a brilliant example for what young emerging designers
can do.”
FJFW consultant and famed Australian fashion educator Nicholas Huxley said the company’s efforts to create formal education pathways for designers who show at the now 15-yearold event were critical to Fiji’s fashion success.
He hopes young people will value and enter FJFW Student Designer initiatives.
“Lai has shown a very dedicated and professional attitude to his studies and has now graduated with a Bachelor of Fashion Design Degree. The Fashion Design Studio Sydney TAFE is a renowned Australian fashion institute where students study a wide range of subjects from pattern making and garments construction to textile design and printing as well as colour, the elements and principles of design and life drawing, fashion illustration and all areas of computer-aided design.
“Lai has done exceedingly well in all areas with his eight body final year collection using nearly all the mentioned subjects to fulfil his desired innovative collection! His creative process and innovative thinking were matched by his understanding of commerciality! Watching his collection walk the runway was a most exciting experience for me! It was a marvellous collection … and I am so proud of his fabulous achievements!”
Laisiasa hopes that, like him, students who find themselves at an uncomfortable crossroads of their high school career will find faith in their passion.
“If you have had to stop schooling for whatever reason, whether you couldn’t afford your school fees or whatever and you want to participate in the Fiji Fashion Student Designers category, I would suggest you go for it. Whatever you do now will help you with your future even if it’s something small,” Laisiasa said.
“Even if you just make a simple dress. You don’t have to have lots of money to do that but it’s the way you execute the art and the work that matters. Just take that first step of just drawing and then send it to the tailor. You could soon be doing the emerging designer’s show and winning because that’s what happened to me. The same can happen to you!”
The 2022 FJFW x Palmolive Student Designer Competition opened in mid-March and closes on May 1.
Open only to senior high school students who have to show proof of enrolment if they make the final round, each entrant must design an outfit to the concept of “Luminous Resort Day or Night”.
A panel of judges will choose 10 finalists whose work will be displayed as part of a fashion capsule in public locations in Suva.
The winners will get cash prizes given by Communications Fiji Ltd, tickets to Fiji Fashion Week premium shows on May 27-28 and their work will be highlighted in
the media.
More information can be accessed via https://www.fi jifashionweek.com.fj/program.
- LICE MOVONO is a freelance journalist and independent public relations advisor.
