The pressure of finding the perfect high school prom dress can make girls weep in despair.
Not Daisy Harris-Burland though. She is a savvy and enterprising creative who refused to worry before her end-of-year bash.
“I was 16 and everyone was paying £400 for a dress. I was like, ‘I don’t have that money – I’m 16!”
She did what the resourceful do: refused to be beaten, scoured the house for unwanted materials and got to work.
“I ended up going to the prom as a magazine goddess with a black bin liner petticoat and bubble wrap lining.
“I looked incredible until someone spilled a drink on me. I was standing in the middle of the dance-floor with my dress splitting down the front.”
And what does one do?
“I went to reception and got some duct tape and did a job on it with a hand-drier in the toilet.”
Now 22, Harris-Burland proves we are all a collection of our experiences.
“Being a cheapskate shaped the rest of my life.
“I was 16 but it gave me a great idea.”
Her one-woman-run fashion house, Dumpster Design, has just moved into a new studio in her native Hampshire. Its designs make up one-tenth of the eagerly awaited Brighton Frocks Show in Brighton Fashion Week.
In the years since school, Harris-Burland moved to Manchester to study but only lasted a year. She was not interested in the fashion world but the creative process. Being a drop-out is an advantage, she says, because being detached from the industry makes her designs original.
“I don’t know Primark from Prada – I’m just good with a glue stick. But I was sure I could go somewhere with these dresses I make for fun out of rubbish.”
That’s because everything she does is organic.
“It comes from the material and from my own head, from working on the body and mannequins, as opposed to what is in magazines and being pushed by the industry.”
Being forced to work on a project called “generic” as a student meant enough was enough.
“I had a big sit-down with my parents: ‘Let me take a year out. Let me try to pursue this as far as it can go. If it works, then great, and if not, then at least I’ve got it out of my system’.”
Her process is back-to-front. There are no designs sketched out on paper and she has no idea what a dress may look like until materials arrive.
It makes the moulding, crimping and tearing exciting but can spook clients – even if there are only labour costs and the price of shipping unwanted industrial rubbish.
Still, the commissions speak for themselves.
Suzuki sent over some shredded cardboard and “caution” tape for a design. A private client sent over photographs to be formed into a ready-to-wear collage dress. The average price of a piece is £450.
Dumpster Design has also turned used J-cloths and editions of Waitrose’s Love Life magazine into haute couture.
Her style is called edgy and daring, but that’s the by-product of her approach.
“The Waitrose dress is very empowering for girls to wear.
“Whoever wears them feels empowered and defiant. When you are wearing this huge structure, intricately handcrafted from cardboard, there is a sense of power and femme-fatal defiance – that anything is possible.”
Before we spoke I had visions of an eco-warrior rummaging bins.
“I’m no eco-goddess, but being able to transform something you would originally not view as beautiful, something used, into something incredible is amazing.
“With such a throwaway society at the moment Dumpster Design captures the need for sustainability.”
Venues across Brighton, May 30 to June 3
For more information and to buy tickets, £11 to £45, visit the website, www.brightonfashionweek.com.
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