Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts

AS a child, 23-year-old Priscilla Tan filled stacks of paper in her house with colourful drawings of dolls in beautiful dresses.

What used to be just a childhood passion is now her career - she is now a full-time fashion designer.

Her designs are on sale at Swirl, a boutique in Stamford House, for between $99 and $269.

Priscilla graduated from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (Nafa) with a diploma in fashion design in 2006. A year later, she obtained her degree in fashion marketing, jointly awarded by Nafa and the University of Huddersfield.

Her education at Nafa, she said, has helped fulfill a long-time dream.

"Whenever I see somebody wearing a dress designed by me, the feeling is indescribable," she said.

At Swirl, Priscilla spends her time creating new designs for the label, serving customers and helping her bosses market the brand.

As a fashion design student, Priscilla said her teachers always encouraged her to be as creative as possible.

She said Nafa students have the freedom to design unconventional garments that sometimes border on the outlandish.

"But we also learnt that you can't design stuff that is too wild, or nobody will buy them," she added.

At Nafa, she learnt the technical aspects of fashion design, including drafting and sourcing for the right fabric for garments.

She said: "We sometimes come up with designs based on a theme or with various muses in mind."

Her muse is Hollywood actress Drew Barrymore, who is elegant yet spunky.

Priscilla remembers her school days fondly, particularly the time spent with her Nafa classmates.

She said: "Sometimes, we'd make mistakes like picking the wrong fabric, or one of us would make a really horrible dress."

Paid off

The best times, she said, were when hard work paid off.

She said: "There was once I wanted to make a quilted PVC vest, but my lecturer thought it was a totally ridiculous idea.

"I took nearly three weeks to make it, but when I was done, it looked great and I felt really good."

She said her degree programme in fashion marketing was a totally different experience. She was schooled in the commercial aspects of fashion, such as marketing and calculating the cost of materials.

Priscilla's degree graduation collection was later shortlisted to feature in the Graduate Showcase of Singapore International Fashion Week, where she won the coveted Topshop internship award.

Her two-week stint there, she said, was one of the best experiences of her life.

She said: "It felt surreal because I am a big fan of the brand."

During her internship, Priscilla sat in at meetings with clothing buyers, dressmakers and pattern makers.

She said: "It was an eye-opener. They make clothes on such a huge scale - there are so many resources available."

She even had the chance to design a top for the Topshop label, which was later sold here.

But Priscilla says fashion design isn't all glamour. Behind the scenes, designers have to brainstorm, draw patterns, sew their creations and think of how to market their works. She said: "It's a lot of hard work involved too."

Priscilla will be sharing her Topshop internship experience on 17Jan at3pmat NAFA Campus 2, AVA room 3-06.