Small children often have big imaginations and EMMA DAVISON found plenty of proof of that when she was invited to Scholes to see a fashion show with a difference. The confident models strutting their stuff on the catwalk were just four and five years old.
THE models take to the catwalk, confidently striding up and down and showing off to perfection their colourful couture.
But there’s something unusual about these catwalk kings and queens – they are just four and five years old.
And even more astonishingly, they have themselves created the sparkling and highly imaginative costumes they proudly display with ease.
The youngsters from Scholes Junior and Infant School have had a helping hand of course, from Pam Robinson, former head of fashion at Huddersfield Technical College.
The reception class children were tasked with staging a fashion show for their families and schoolmates as part of their studies of the topic imagination.
And Pam, who has in the past masterminded the Huddersfield carnival costumes, was enlisted to help the children create their catwalk outfits.
She explains: “The children have done extremely well, their imagination and creativity has been really impressive.
“They each imagined their own outfit for the catwalk.
“I made basic interpretations of what they wanted but they finished off the outfits by adding the decorations themselves.”
The 32 children came up with some impressive ideas after watching film of real catwalk models for inspiration.
Many of the girls designed elegant fairytale dresses, fashioned using lace, sparkles, feathers and flowers.
The boys created colourful capes painted with flames and other emblems and revelled in twirling these around on the stage, resembling a cross-between superheroes and Harry Potter.
Pam says: “The boys wanted to have capes and be like superheroes – we had a ‘bat boy’– while the girls wanted long dresses and pink tutus which they decorated with frills and other pretty bits.
“They were very specific with the designs they wanted and communicated their ideas really well.
“I have worked in education since the 70s, but never with such young children so I was really amazed at their level of creativity – hopefully this experience will give them the building blocks for making their own clothes in the future.”
The children had a ball taking to the stage and strutting their stuff to music, pausing at the front to describe the details of their winning frocks.
And for Pam, who was responsible for the building of the college’s fashion and related crafts department, the proudest moment was when her own granddaughter, Tilly Hesmondhalgh, took her catwalk twirl.
Tilly, five, thoroughly enjoyed making her little number– a stripy two-piece trimmed with lace and teamed with gold strappy sandals – and says Pam she could follow in her fashionably-clad footsteps.
Pam, who now has her own clothing label No Repeat, says: “My daughter, Rebecca Hesmondhalgh, is an art teacher and her husband Brendan is a ceramicist so she definitely looks set to follow in her family’s creative footsteps!
“Tilly loves drawing and is very creative. She likes sewing and is learning to knit – she enjoys making clothes for her dollies with me.
“She loves fashion and is a very girly girl so she wanted a long skirt and lots of frills. She loves Hannah Montana and likes to wear pretty outfits like her.
“Tilly says she wants to do something in fashion and designing and she was very excited to get up there on stage in the outfit she’d made – I was very proud and quite emotional!”
