Pearl Johnston has been named the winner of the Irish Heart Foundation (IHF) fashion award.
The 28-year-old from Letterkenny, Co Donegal, is a fashion and textile graduate of the University of Ulster specialising in illustration, who has studied drawing at Cooper Union in New York.
She received a prize of €3,000, a Waterford trophy and a 12-month placement in the Design Centre in Dublin. Runners-up were Jennifer Whitty from Portmarnock, Co Dublin, Catherine McDonagh from Limerick and Aishling Doyle from East Wall, Dublin.
This is the ninth year of the awards, which are sponsored by BMW and run by the IHF. Proceeds from the fundraising luncheon in the Leopardstown Pavilion, where the fashion awards took place, will go towards the setting up of a national stroke audit in Ireland with the ultimate aim of establishing specialist care units around the country.
"Such units will reduce mortality from strokes by 25 per cent," according to the chief executive of the IHF, Michael O'Shea.