Late Late Show appearance for award-winning Cosima's dress

CLONAKILTY home-schooled student Cosima Augustin won two major awards at the Junk Kouture fashion awards in Dublin last night, for her creation ‘Adonis Blue’.

Cosima picked up the LSAD Scholarship for the creation, made from Lidl brochures and discarded materials like old farm rope, pumpkin seeds, some used can pull rings and even an old camping chair! 

What's more, she will appear on the Late Late Show tonight (Friday) with two other Junk Kouture award winners. 

The award entitles her to a scholarship for one year at the Limerick School of Art & Design and she also won the title for the southern region.

Cosima studies art at Rita’s Clay House with art teacher Rita Morrissey who encouraged her with the piece.

The butterfly-themed costume was a finalist in this year’s prestigious Junk Kouture competition, which encourages second level students to create original and innovative outfits using only recycled material. 

Cosima, who is home-schooled, was the only West Cork representative in the final. ‘It was my art teacher Rita Morrissey, who runs ‘Rita’s Clay House’ who suggested the competition to me in the first place and at the beginning we didn’t know quite what to do and we started off with different concepts before we came up with a theme based on a butterfly,’ Cosima told The Southern Star.

‘We started collecting all types of junk back in September and I even got people to hold onto pumpkin seeds at Halloween for my costume. Rita gave me an old camping chair and we used the fabric from it to make the bodice. I made the gloves using the netting from the cup holders of the camping chair, combined with zips out of old farm jackets and I then used some old farm rope to make the head piece.’

It took Cosima the best part of four months to make her costume, which is based on a butterfly and flowers, and she also used paper and old zips to create her piece.

The overall winner of Junk Kouture, which was held in the 3 Arena in Dublin last night, was Mariusz Malon from Scoil Mhuire Secondary School in Buncrana, Co Donegal.