It takes years for some fashion designers to catch the industry’s eye, for recent graduate Meagan Wellman things are moving at an accelerated pace.

Just months after graduating from the University for the Creative Arts, Bermudian Ms Wellman was invited to take part in a Newcastle-based fashion showcase called Elévon.

The 22-year-old said the opportunity came as a huge surprise.

“I had just put photos from my graduate collection, which made it to Graduate Fashion Week, out there on a couple of websites and wasn’t really expecting anything back from it,” she explained.

“Then all of a sudden I get an e-mail saying I had a message from someone and it was the event’s founder and organiser getting in touch with me via LinkedIn. They invited me to take part in the showcase and I used that as an opportunity to show my debut brand M-SEW.”

Ms Wellman said the April 12th show proved to be an amazing experience.

She met other emerging designers who were also keen to get noticed in the industry and was able to show off her collection to a fresh audience.

“I got to show six outfits with nine garments in total,” she said. “And the feedback from the show has been nothing but positive.

“People have loved my work and I’ll be opening a pre-order shop soon so I can take on some orders from the show and elsewhere.”

She counts herself lucky to have been featured in the show, especially considering she hasn’t been a fashion designer for very long.

“It’s pretty cool that they found and selected me as one of four designers for that show,” she said. “They could have chosen any of the other 16 graduates from my school who took part in London’s Graduate Fashion Week, but they selected me. It felt really good and I was honoured.”

The new designer admitted she has always been creative and enjoyed fine arts, however it was during her final years at Warwick Academy that her love for fashion really began to bloom.

After the school introduced textiles to its curriculum, Ms Wellman found that she preferred it to other media.

“I pretty much stuck with it and for my GCSE I created a quilt. Then for the International Baccalaureate [IB] programme I made a woven dress,” she said.

“To be honest, I like the fact that it’s clean in comparison to oils and acrylics and stuff. It’s a cleaner medium and with fashion you have that human interaction which appeals to me as well.”

Her mother, Christine Wellman, feels she was always destined to go into this field. Not only were both her grandmothers seamstresses, the designer’s middle initials (Stephanie Electra Wellman) also spell out S.E.W.

Ms Wellman described her style as a designer as “simple, but not”.

“It’s easy to wear, but all the pieces can be mixed and worn with each other to create a different look,” she said.

“For me clothing should be about comfort, but also looking good as well. I think when people think of looking comfortable they associate it with looking boring, but I try to show that you can be fashionable and still be relaxed.”

She said she likes to experiment with new fabrics like neoprene (the material used to make diving suits) and also uses a lot of colour — everything from bold metallics to eye-popping neons and soft pastel hues.

“I’ve always been around colours growing up in Bermuda because it’s a colourful island, so that lends itself to the colours I choose for my garments,” she said.

Ms Wellman is currently working on the orders she booked at the show and focusing on opening her own shop.

She is also getting started on her next collection for September, which she hopes to showcase in London.

“My ultimate goal is to be able to be an international fashion brand,” she said. “I enjoy the fashion industry as you get to work with people from all over the world. It’s really cool when you meet people from somewhere you’ve never heard of and get to learn something new.

“Also, the feeling of having someone else love and wear what you’ve worked on for ages is an amazing feeling.”

For more details on Ms Wellman’s luxury women’s wear label, visit www.m-sew.com. Her online store opens this Friday.