THE world's biggest dress will be on show in Durham on Friday.

The dress will be on show at Durham Town Hall as part of The Alternative Model Fair Trade Fashion Show, which aims to raise awareness of exploitation in the clothing industry.

Local schoolchildren, residents and university students have been invited to model clothes produced by labels that guarantee a fair deal for production workers in non-Western countries.

The fashion show begins at 6.45pm and there will be fair trade wine tasting and music until 10.30pm. The event begins at 5.30pm with a Samba band in the market square.

At the end of show, the official largest dress in the world will be paraded down the catwalk, worn by three people sitting on each other's shoulders.

The dress was sewn together by campaigners from the national student group Speak, which also organised the event.

It was created to highlight the group's protest over sweatshops and will be handed to Prime Minister Tony Blair next year.

Event co-ordinator Jillian Hill, a student at Durham University, said: "Hopefully, we will be getting people making more squares for the dress on the night and they will be sewn on to the back."

The event has been organised jointly between Speak, Durham Anti-Sweatshop Campaign and Gateway World Shop, to try to promote fairly traded clothing as an alternative to high street fashion.

Sponsorship for the event has come from the Co-operative bank's community dividend scheme, Durham City Council and the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development.

Tickets are available from The Gateway World Shop, Market Square, in Durham.