DUCK Tape, carrier bags and dishcloths were just some of the bizarre materials used to create clothes for a college fashion show which sashayed into town last week.

Oaklands College hosted the It Ain’t Rubbish exhibition last week at St Albans Town Hall which featured designs based around the theme of sustainability and the environment.

Quirky outfits were paraded on Wednesday afternoon as part of the fashion show outside the Town Hall and showcased creative talent as well as the wealth of materials which can be recycled and put to good use.

Some of the young designers had been given briefings from organisations and businesses, one of which was Shurtape, an American manufacturer of duct tape. Megan Turner, a first year student of the Extended Diploma in Fashion and Clothing, designed her dress using woven duct tape.

Katrina Feakes, a student on the Foundation Diploma in Art and Design, designed and modelled her outfit, a white dress with a train and trim made from distressed organza decorated with feathers and pearls.

The design was intended to represent an oil spill leaking into and polluting the environment and was created in response to a particular brief from St Albans District Council.

Other eye-catching outfits included Queenie Secker’s dress which was made out of dishcloths, scourers for shoulder detail and a belt from pegs and Lucy Gray’s design which used pheasant feathers, normally discarded by the meat industry and recycled butterfly pins.

Inside the Town Hall, students expressed their creativity through other forms. Ben Martin’s “The Secret Life of the National Grid” featured 13 identical plaster rats on exercise bikes who all appeared to be powering a 40 watt bulb.

Adam Daniel Simpson’s “Man’s Pollution” showed a man standing over a sewage pipe and was accompanied by the inscription: “He holds his intelligence above all other/Whatever he sees he takes/Whatever he touches he destroys/He is the most destructive force on earth/He is Man.”