Winner: East Berkshire College
· Naa Williams
· Tyler Halstead,
· Georgia Nutkins
· Jessika Downing
· Kabir Sagoo
· Aneesa Farooq
· Katy Noga
Inspiration
Students from the 1st and 2nd years of the BTEC Diploma in Art and Design at East Berkshire College worked together to create their recycled outfits for entry to the ‘Ascot recycled fashion’ competition organised by The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.
The creative design used unconventional materials which included willow, newspaper and
Runner- Up : Claudia Moreira
Inspiration
This floral piece was inspired by the sight of the beginning of spring, noticeable in the Berkshire area. An old Japanese pleating technique was used to form each flower. Pages of a horse racing book found in a local charity shop were incorporated into the design. The rest of the materials include a piece of wire and an old headband covered in fabric.
Runner- Up : Heather Atkinson 
Inspiration
This outfit for Royal Ascot is totally recycled using a vintage second hand dress in royal blue polkadot, this year’s high fashion. The Tutu skirt and corset with matching hat reflects the social excitement of the Royal Ascot Race Meeting. The hat represents champagne bubbles, twinkling playfully in the brim with two cocktail sticks and cherries.
Items used in the making of this piece include an old vintage dress, curtain tape, an old necklaceand materials sourced from local charity shops.
The top hat’s place in society fashion was assured when Prince Albert started wearing one in 1850. The first top hats were made with felt, most commonly being beaver fur pelt. Later, they would be made of silk. The structure underneath the felt or silk was made of a material called goss. The nineteenth century is sometimes known as the Century of the Top Hat. In the latter half of the 19th century, the top hat gradually fell out of fashion, with the middle classes adopting bowler hats and soft felt hats such as fedoras, which were more convenient for city life, as well as being suitable for mass production. In comparison, a top hat needed to be handmade by a skilled hatter, with few young people willing to take up what was obviously a dying trade.
By the end of World War I it had become a rarity in everyday life. It continued to be used for formal wear, with a morning suit in the daytime and with evening clothes (tuxedo or tailcoat) until the late 1930s. In the present day, the top hat is only worn with a morning suit for such occasions as Derby Day, Royal Ascot and weddings. You would no more expect to see a polar bear in the Royal Enclosure than a male patron without morning dress but that doesn’t mean that their attire is stale or stuffy or prevents an expression of their personality. There are all sorts of acceptable ways to personalise Royal Enclosure attire, starting with the tie.
The tie as we know it today has been around since the 1920s and, rather than keeping the neck warm, this style of neck wear was simply a fashion statement and an opportunity to display individuality.
Once a virtually mandatory piece of men’s clothing, the waistcoat has become uncommon in contemporary dress with the exception of its partnership with the morning suit. The waistcoat is one of the few pieces of clothing whose origin historians can date precisely. King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland introduced the waistcoat as a part of correct dress during the Restoration of the British monarchy in the 1600s.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, men often wore incredibly elaborate and brightly-coloured, even garish, waistcoats, until fashion in the nineteenth century restricted them in formal wear. The development of the suit dictated that informal waistcoats become the same colour as the rest of a man’s outfit.
Jason has not only wowed his audience as a pop singer, but he has also performed the lead in many West End shows such as ‘Joseph & The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat’, ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ and most recently ‘Priscilla Queen Of The Desert’. After re-launching his career in I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! in 2006, Jason went on to produce his ‘Greatest Hits’ album and in 2010 released his 5th album ‘Soundtrack of the 80s’.
