Young Fashion Designer competition winner Marialucia Dimucci shows off winning outfit

Emanuela Dimucci modelling her sister's winning design

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Marialucia Dimucci, the winner of the Wheatsheaf Centre Young Fashion Designer competition showed off her winning piece as part of the Wheatsheaf Centre Fashion show today (Saturday 1 November).

Marialucia entered the competition after being persuaded to by her husband.

She said: “I have been designing all of my life but when I went to university it sort of knocked my confidence a little. I then saw this competition and my husband persuaded me to get involved so I did.”

For the competition Marialucia designed an autumn/winter collection based on artwork from the 1900s.

She said: “My collection is based on the British Empire and I did some research and looked back at artwork from the 1900s and decided to base it on places like Australia, Egypt and Manchester.”

After winning the competition, Marialucia’s design was then put together by seamstress Annette Mattingley from Well Stitched.

Annette said: “It was a nice design to put together and it was a nice piece to work on. Some stages took longer than others but overall it was good to work on.”

The winning design was then shown off at today's Fashion Show and was modelled by Marialucia’s sister Emanuela.

Martin Ballard from Red Cape Marketing said: “We are very pleased with the winning design. You could see from the entry that Marialucia knew what she was talking about and knew what she was doing.”

Marialucia is pleased that she entered the competition and believes that by winning it has helped her boost her confidence.

She said: “It has definitely given me a confidence boost and from entering this competition I have been given a job in design in Manchester so it's all going really well.”

Marialucia’s winning creation will now be used to advertise next year’s competition.