FASHION student Kamille Davis is hoping a touch of Northumbrian tradition will play its part in scooping an international award on the other side of the world.

For 23-year-old Kamille, from Alnmouth, Northumberland, is turning to the county’s mining heritage as the foundation of her bid for honours in an international young fashion designer contest.

Kamille, a graduate of Northumbria University, is in Dunedin, New Zealand, preparing to face 30 rivals from around the globe in the finals of the iD International Emerging Designer Awards.

Already successful with her graduation collection The Fishermen Tribe, she is now putting the finishing touches to a collection called Wrapped In Smoke, inspired by her time living among the mining community of Bedlington.

Kamille said: “A lot of my family were either fishermen or in the Navy, and I took my inspiration for The Fishermen Tribe from Alnmouth, using details and shape ideas from vintage work-wear pieces.

“Now I have taken my research for Wrapped In Smoke down another route of vintage work-wear and another place I have lived where the main trade used to be coal-mining.

“I have explored the work of miners, the environment that they worked in, and the clothing and equipment they used and wore.

“My collection has details of sheer smoke-like knitted pieces layered over work-wear silhouettes engulfing the wearer in a smoke-like haze or creating the illusion of layering through hybrid garments.”

Kamille says she has merged the marine colours of her fishing research with the dusty industrial landscape of the mines. She has used a canary print in recognition of the use of the bird by miners for safety and survival underground.

She describes it as “created for the modern man who is content with functioning in today’s technological-dependent society, but who still has a romanticised longing for honest labour and pride in his heritage”.

Kamille hit the heights when she entered her early graduate collection into the Italian fashion competition Mittelmoda.

She won the innovation prize offered by Otago Polytechnic in Dunedin, and a scholarship to help fund the follow-up collection.

A Black Belt kick-boxer, she has also spent six months with a luxury tailoring company in London as a design assistant in 2011.

The IDEA awards in New Zealand are scheduled for March 14 though Kamille has flown out four weeks ahead to prepare.

She is one of only two UK finalists – the other is from London – and will face 15 New Zealanders, 11 Australians, two Irish students and one from China. The finalists were selected from a pool of more than 100 young designers from some of the world’s leading fashion schools. Selection and fashion designer Tanya Carlson said this year’s collections were “challenging and thought-provoking”, with a touch of exaggeration.

“Some of the collections could have been seen on the likes of Lady Gaga or Nicki Minaj,” she said. “Design students’ imagination means they can do anything.”

Committee chair Susie Staley added: “The iD International Emerging designer Awards offer graduates a unique opportunity to be critiqued by some of the most influential fashion leaders in the world.

“It is a chance to be noticed on an international stage.”