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| Sunday, 27 March 2005 |
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Business |
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News Business Features
Editorial
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First Lankan designer collection at Odel by Surekha Galagoda For the first time a Sri Lankan designer collection will be on display at Odel, Colombo's well-known department store. "I decided to sell Ms Nilupa Rajakaruna's clothes at Odel as I see much potential in her," said Otara Chandiram, Managing Director of Odel. Ms Chandiram was one of the ten judges at the First Export Designer Competition organised by the Export Development Board (EDB). Ms Rajakaruna's collection together with 50 other selected small and medium scale companies will present their specially designed craft collections catering to niche markets at the Serendibe 2005, the unique designer craft show organised by the EDB to showcase the creativity and capabilities of the craft based export oriented SMEs as well as young and upcoming designers in Sri Lanka. The Serendibe Designer Crafts Exhibition will be held from April 1-3 at Kaladuwa, Beira Lake in Colombo 2. She said that she together with Rajakaruna should be able to develop the line of clothes to create more for Odel. Her clothes are very international and of good quality, colour selection and stylish. Ms Chandiram said though Sri Lanka sews most of the garments for international labels the designs come from overseas and it is time to change this trend. Since individual designer collections have not been developed in Sri Lanka all designs come from overseas. Therefore, the initiative by the EDB is a good start and I would like to sell more Sri Lankan designer collections in my store, she said. As most of the customers who come to Odel are foreigners it will give her the much needed exposure for further development. Ms Rajakaruna was born in Kurunegala and her parents are government servants. She had her education at Holy Family Convent, Kurunegala and sat for her Advanced Level examination in Science. She was selected to the Medical College but opted to go to the University of Moratuwa to study for a fashion design course at the Faculty of Architecture. She specialised in Fashion design. This is the collection I did for my final project. It is an office wear collection for women executives. The key aspect in my line of clothing is that I did not want to highlight the figure of the wearer. As a newcomer I am very happy that a person like Ms Chandiram has selected my collection to be sold at Odel. I want to get her advice and develop the collection further. I am also grateful to the EDB for giving me this opportunity. "I have labelled my collection Line-in-line and would like to sell my collection under my label". EDB Chairman Rohantha Athukorala said that there were over 500 applications and in the first round the designs were on paper and during the second round we saw the real designs. He said that lack of innovative designs has become a severe constraint in the development and expansion of several product sectors to the international market. Exporters should pay more attention to product and design development to become competitive in the international market, he said. The categories of products selected for the designer competition are giftware, apparel, ceramics, footwear, toys and jewellery. They were judged on novelty and innovativeness, workmanship, originality,
marketability, efficient material utilisation and commercial production. |
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