Mia Lawson has recently graduated from AUT with a Bachelor of Design, majoring in Fashion. Currently, she is travelling through South East Asia which has been incredibly eye opening. Seeing the mass pollution and the amounts of plastic waste along the beaches has been impactful in Lawson’s life. “If I am to work in the fashion industry, I want to make a difference through something I love doing.” Lawson surprisingly has not been in the fashion world for too long. She planned to study textiles at University, as a child she had always had a strong interest in fashion, so she decided to listen to her instincts and follow her passion. Through her studies she has learnt a lot from the mistakes that she made during her design and production processes and aims to improve on them with every new project she takes on. “I found the most important skill to improve on, time and time again, was time and production management.
I found that being proactive and giving myself early deadlines to allocate room for improvements were saviours for finishing my graduate collection on time.” Lawson’s graduate collection is vibrant in colour made with 100 percent silk taffeta and 100 percent viscose knit. Her decision to use these textiles so intensely in her collection was to help her embrace the feminine aesthetic; a design aim in her graduate concept. Lawson’s graduate collection is influenced by the natural cycle of floral beauty. “I would have to say this collection is very true to my nostalgic and feminine aesthetic, which is obviously shown throughout my work.” The inspiration for this collection stems from the loungewear fashion of the post-war era in the late 20s – 30s. The inspiration extends to the beauty ideals put against women at the time and how this is still an issue to this day. “This is why I wanted to base my collection on enhancing and embracing a woman’s natural beauty.”
After interning at Leo + Be, she has gained valuable industry knowledge, however, she is hoping to branch out to social media to showcase her own work for those who are interested in her designs. “In the future, I would like to have my own boutique that supports start-up and New Zealand designers that have a similar ethos to me.” For more information, email mia-hl@hotmail.com or find her on Instagram @mialawson_.
