A local designer had the chance of a lifetime the opportunity to show her clothing line at a New York fashion show.Regina Simmons is relatively new to the fashion industry, having only started designing her line ReginaQ a year ago.Despite that she was invited to showcase her work as part of Fashion on the Hudson, a show arranged by BTE TV in New York.“I have been sketching [for a while] but this is the first year I actually produced a line,” said Mrs Simmons, wife of Rev Cyril Simmons of Ebenezer Methodist Church in St George.By day she works as a credit analyst in commercial banking at HSBC Bermuda.In her after-hours she balances caring for two young sons with her passion for design, often staying up until the wee hours of the morning to make her ideas a reality.“I started sewing as a young child growing up in Detroit, Michigan,” said Mrs Simmons. “My mother, Sandra Werts, taught me how to sew. At five years old I was making clothes for my Barbie dolls. Then in high school and middle school I continued making clothing and it has always stuck with me. I have been in Bermuda for nine years now. Fashion has always been something that has been a love for me.”She considered studying fashion design in university but decided to focus on political science and psychology instead. She only took up designing again a year ago.“My first line was a social line for sophisticated women,” she said. “It is for when you want to look nice, but you want to be comfortable. There are things you could wear on a Friday night if you were going out to eat or going to the movies. My next line will probably be more evening. I have started sketching already.”Mrs Simmons said her clothing was not only designed for the typical stick-figure model.“The styles are such that they could fit on different women of varying sizes,” she said. “None of my models were plus-size, but I want to include larger women in my designs, because curvy women are the majority.”Mrs Simmons first showed her clothing line at Mario Dismont’s Some Like It Hot fashion show in April.“I get inspiration from many things and people,” she said. “I absolutely love the story and styles of CoCo Chanel which is very classy and elegant, but on an everyday level it’s the small things that inspire me. Often it comes from me looking in my closet for something to wear or picturing the perfect top to go with my favourite pair of pants or skirt. Sometimes, it’s as simple as seeing a shoe and wanting to create my own design to go with the shoe.“Quite frequently, it’s a print or pattern that inspires me, which is why you can often find me at Qui-ja Fabric and Accessories during my lunch hour just browsing to see what’s new and to get inspiration. Last month when I was in New York, I spent some time in [the fabric store] Moods, and I was in heaven. The inspiration really began to flow and before I knew it an hour-and-a-half had passed it literally felt like ten minutes. I can and do find inspiration in almost anything.”Mrs Simmons is a fan of the television programme ‘Project Runway’, which pits aspiring fashion designers against one another. She often sits at home and tries to participate by creating different things along the lines of the contest challenges.She tries to wear her own clothing as often as possible.“I have a T-shirt that people like,’ she said. “It says ‘believe’ and has our logo. I have had requests to make things, but since I have a full-time job and children at home, I don’t have a lot of spare time. I want to focus more on building a brand and launching, marketing and mass-producing my work. That is one of the challenges of being in Bermuda. Right now my clothes are not available in stores, but you can see my designs online. They are available on a piece by piece order basis.“I get a lot of great feedback from my clothing. The benefit of my line is that people can actually see themselves wearing it somewhere.”However, she said she had plans to kick her designs up a notch so they would be edgier and more creative for the runway.“The new line will be a combination some evening and some daytime wear,” she said. “I would love to one day be able to do fashion full-time, because I love it. It is one of my passions. But I am nowhere near that point. I have so far to go before that happens.“In the interim, I would like to gain some more experience and possibly do some internships or shadow some of the [more well known] designers to see how things work behind the scenes. There is so much that goes into production and manufacturing. I did make some connections this past year, so I do have some possible networking opportunities.”Useful website: www.reginaq.com.