Young Wellington designer Sophie Burrowes is off to Fashion Week. The Hataitai student entered Westpac’s young designer of the year competition, winning a top three placing and a chance to showcase her work at the inaugural event.

SOPHIE Burrowes has come a long way from ripping up op-shop clothes and recreating looks with her sister’s sewing machine.
The Massey University student has her own fashion label and is one of three finalists in this year’s Young Designers Competition.
Entrants, including Porirua designers Philippa&Alice, will showcase three pieces from their range at the Westpac Red Collection Show during Fashion Week, in the hope of being named young designer of the year.
“Yikes! It’s like aaahhh, oh my gosh, I didn’t really expect that!” says Burrowes, who is modest about her achievement.
The 20-year-old goes to university in the morning then spends nine hours a day working on her namesake label.
Observing the competitive New Zealand industry, the fashion forward student decided she would rather spend her spare time making a name for herself, than partying her way through university.
“I just started making things, building a portfolio. Our fashion industry is so small, I thought it would be good to get one step ahead so people notice me.”
Using money saved from working in cafes, she would buy fabric and design pieces, base them on current trends, and create new looks to suit her taste.
Burrowes started selling her clothes when a Facebook group she set up to showcase her work began to attract designers.
Through this group she’s not only had photo shoots arranged by Red 11 model agency, and has been contracted to design outfits for the first ever beauty products range at Fashion Week.
Now stocked at Miss Wang in Wellington and Bellbird in Dunedin, her first Bellbird order sold out by the time it reached the shelves. The second order lasted only three hours.
“I had a feeling she would make her mark on the world,” says Barbara Knight, Burrowes’ materials teacher from Queen Margaret College.
Knight believes the modest teenager, who won an Outstanding Scholarship for Technology in her final year at high school, has the drive and ambition necessary to succeed in fashion.
It also helped, Burrowes says, that at the same time she launched her first collection in mid 2009, her best friend Stella Maxwell was being discovered as an international model.
Whenever Stella was back in New Zealand to do a photo shoot she would wear Sophie Burrowes to push the label.
Despite her success, the Massey University student is well grounded and likes to keep to herself.
“I don’t want to come off as one of those people who is like ‘oh my gosh, look at what I’m doing!’”
She doesn’t have a fashion blog or twitter account and says it’s not her style to preach the gospel of fashion.
“I don’t want it to be like ‘you’re wearing my stuff because it’s a brand. Wear it because you want to’.”
Burrowes runs her business from the small loft in her parents’ Hataitai apartment.
If she wins the Westpac young designer competition the prize is a $5,000 Westpac business account, business banking advice, and business mentoring from a designer for a year.
This would help her “answer all those fashion related questions she just doesn’t know” and perhaps help get her a bigger workspace.
The third year student has one more year left of study to go, and says even if she wins, she will finish her education first.
However, the keen designer is also adamant she can juggle a career as well as being a student.
“It’s not that I’m scared but if I stop designing now, that would seem like such a waste – especially since I’m just beginning to make it.”
The Westpac Red Collection shows on September 23 at Fashion Week in Auckland.
Hannah Spyksma