Designer and taylor Joyline Fabiane Abed wearing a red and white dress item made for the fashion show. PC: Conway Kalmet
Joyline Fabiane Abed is the 18-year-old behind the hit fashion show performance at the Malapoa Music night this week.
Abed is a Year 13 student attending Malapoa College (MC). The young talented entrepreneur shares that she started learning to tailor at the age of 5. As her mother and most of her family members are tailors she was exposed to the trade very young and naturally picked it up when her mother needed help with orders for clothing items.
“Most of my family members make island dresses and shirts. My mother on the other hand makes all sorts of designs, she tailors and designs herself and growing up watching this, I wanted to do the same. A tailor that could also design items,” she says.
According to Joyline, she began taking orders in Year 10 as she started her own little tailoring business, going by Joy Dezigns on Facebook, taking orders according to her school work load trying to juggle both her business and her academic life.
“Sometimes it gets hard and tailoring gets distracting but I stop taking orders when I feel like it is an overload for the school work I have,” she says.
The Malapoa fashion show was something she had thought would be great exposure for her talent as well as her business. She admits that initially she had planned for something smaller as only 10 people volunteered to model her designs.
“The number quickly grew after that to 56 people in total. Each one brought their material and I decided the design for them to model. There was no labour cost so all the models got a dressing item for free,” she says.
The young designer reveals making the 56 outfits for the fashion show was a feat she accomplished in 1 month and 2 weeks. This was all happening while she was organizing the 56 students who were to participate in the show, she admits that at times this was hectic.
“The show had a lot of positive feedback. All the models went on stage and confidently did everything we spent time practicing.
“The next day I had lots of messages from people who were interested in getting me to tailor items for them,” she says.
With the outcomes of the fashion show she states that she feels confident in her trade and now sees an opportunity where she can do the work not just because she loves it but also as a profession.
“People who have skills in trades like this are most times told that, it is just a hobby and they should consider doing something else as a career. But this is also a job,” Abed says.
“I want to receive more training and qualifications where possible and possibly do this as a career.
“I think we all should be able to be what we aspire to be.”
