Dress success fires Ashleigh's design dreams

Ashleigh's silk dress displayed on the catwalk at New Zealand Fashion Week.

Former Western Heights High School student Ashleigh Price had her design grace the catwalk at the New Zealand Fashion Week.

Ashleigh's two-tone silk dress was inspired by fish scales and petals because the overlapping created "texture and movement".

Ashleigh is in the final year of her fashion diploma at New Zealand Fashion Tech and was offered the chance to showcase her work as part of a new education project.

The project began when New Zealand Fashion Tech owners Kevin Smith and Val Marshall-Smith teamed up with educators Giles Brooker and Prabha Govindasamy to create the unique New Zealand-India fashion education collaboration.

Fifty silk saris inspired by paint colours from Resene were selected and 45 students from New Zealand Fashion Tech were asked to design and make a contemporary-chic fashion look. Ashleigh said she wasn't able to make it up to Auckland for the show but watched it online and was "thrilled" with the way it looked.

"It looked exactly how I wanted it to and the way it moved while the model walked down the catwalk was how I imagined it when I was designing the dress."

Ashleigh said it "sparked her passion" to continue working towards her goals as a fashion designer.

"I looked at other collections and they all looked amazing and I kept thinking one day it could be me up there with a whole collection."

Ashleigh had friends who went to the show and said she had amazing comments about her design.

Her dress was one of 10 looks from the Resene New Zealand Fashion Tech Colour of Fashion collection picked to open the five Resene Designer Selection shows at Fashion Week.