When the folks at Alain Mikli announced the results of their Studiomikli eyewear design competition on Monday, the happiest person in the room wasn't necessarily one of the winners.
The competition, held only in Hong Kong, was divided into two categories - the academic group for design students and the open group for everyone else to show their eyewear. Of the top three finalists in each group, announced at the Felix restaurant ceremony, it turned out that four of the six learned design at the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education under lecturer Coleman Wai Ching (pictured), whose name was prominently invoked by all his proteges. All three winners in the academic group are current students, while the second-placed award winner in the open group graduated last year.
'This is actually a course project assigned by Mr Wai so everyone in our class entered the contest,' finalist Lau Kin-tak said. 'This really gives us a chance to see what it's like to work in the real world preparing presentations and designs.'
All the warm, fuzzy student-teacher gratitude expressed even made Studiomikli's chief designer, Alyson Magee, nostalgic. 'Twenty years ago I was a design student in college and one of my projects was to sketch an eyewear design,' she recalled. 'I called up Mr Mikli and he invited me to his studio and looked at my designs. Then after graduating, I got a call from him offering me a job in eyewear design.' The two winners of each group get a one-week internship at Mikli's studio in Paris.
Design awards C5
