Benefits to Winners
Inspire the industry in a radically new and different direction!
Prizes
£1000 prize for each winner in the 5 categories
Showcase
Finalists will have their work captured through film, photography, display and interactive media, and showcased at a major London exhibition at the
East Wintergarden Canary Wharf.
The showcase is a platform to the fashion sector of the best emerging talent equipped and prepared to contribute to our collective prosperity.
Become part of a community and participate in a dialogue relevant to all young designers in fashion.
Awards have been offered for entries from all parts of the world, showcased in London and then in other regions. Winners have been offered opportunities such as last year’s Design winner’s work being featured an exhibition at Design Museum ‘Sustainable Futures’ in 2010.
Visit the Fashioning the Future Past Awards to see previous winners, showcase, film and gallery of work.
Watch this space for announcements of 2011 ceremony and showcases!
Previous Winners
Q&A with Mary Hanlon
Winner, Fashioning the Future Award Systems for a Sustainable Fashion Industry 2009. Mary Hanlon is the founder of www.SocialAlterations.com, an online education lab for socially responsible fashion design.
Why did you apply for the Fashioning the Future Awards?
‘I applied for the Fashioning the Future Awards, because I wanted to benchmark my work and research against that of others, internationally. Also, it was an exciting opportunity to connect with likeminded people’.
What has winning the Fashioning the Future Awards done for you in your education, as designer, or in your career?
‘Winning the award has helped to showcase my work—placing it within the context of the sustainable fashion movement. It has given me confidence, and motivated me to continue working in this arena’.
What advice would you give to this year’s new designers applying for the awards?
‘Advice to applicants would be to not hold back. While I understand that putting yourself and your work or research out there can be challenging, it is important to stand firm in what you believe is right’.
What does unique mean to you in fashion?
‘To me, unique represents ideas for change. We need to reinvent current systems—systems that do not hurt ourselves, each other or this planet. Unique is our future.
Q&A with Karina Michel
Highly Commended, Fashioning the Future Award Role of Materials in a Sustainable Fashion Industry 2008
Karina Michel is a young American designer working for Indian garment manufacturer Pratibha Syntex. Recently she lived inside the factory for 18 months researching and building sustainable initiatives onsite.
Karina was Highly Commended in ‘Role of Materials in a Sustainable Fashion Industry’ Award for a recycling initiative called LOOP that she helped build and implement for the company to significantly reduce textile waste.
Why did you apply for the Fashioning the Future Awards?
‘Living in an isolated area of India, I wanted to feel apart of a community where my ideas would participate in a dialogue relevant to all young designers in the field of fashion’.
What has winning the Fashioning the Future Awards done for you in your education, as designer, or in your career?
‘I think the biggest thing it did was give me a new found confidence that in world so distracted by war and depressing economies there is still a forum to be heard and recognised in, where you don’t feel so insignificant and their is a shared sense of excitement that you are apart of something new. I’m currently enrolled in MA Fashion and the Environment at London College of Fashion’.
What advice would you give to this year’s new designers applying for the awards?
‘My background is practice based, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate radical or conceptual ideas. On the contrary, I think this industry needs to be inspired radically in new and different directions, but do keep in mind that it is important to contextualise your idea, give them a place to stand in and a home for others to appreciate them in’.
What does unique mean to you in fashion?
‘Unique is simply pushing beyond your boundaries of comfort and safety’.
Q&A with Varun Gambhir
Winner, Fashioning the Future Award Systems for a Sustainable Fashion Industry 2009
Why did you apply for the Fashioning the Future Awards?
‘While studying fashion in college, the ecological problems associated with fashion was quiet disturbing, so I had started working on the idea of co-existence of both, fashion & nature’.
‘Applying for the awards was the apt platform to showcase it and measure its acceptance in the international arena’.
What has winning the Fashioning the Future Awards done for you in your education, as designer, or in your career?
‘This award has infused in me the necessary zest and zeal to broaden the horizons of my knowledge and work towards better goals’.
‘Also, this has given me the opportunity to show this work to many leading retailers, who have shown interest in my work’.
What advice would you give to this year’s new designers applying for the awards?
‘Originality is the mother of all inventions. We are all exposed to ideas, some of them which knock at 3 am. Keep them alive and pursue them to be original and different’.
What does unique mean to you in fashion?
‘Unique is extracting comprehension out of genius, blending it with experience and presenting it with confidence’.
