Sunday, June 11, 2017

Graduate Fashion Week: Meet The Winners

Graduate Fashion Week - which marks its 26th anniversary this year - came to a crescendo last night in London, as the winners were chosen for awards that are aimed at propelling the careers of the UK's brightest fashion talent into the mainstream consciousness.

As always, the Christopher Bailey Gold Award (named after its first winner in 1992) is the big one to win, and this year as was awarded to Halina North from the Edinburgh College of Art for her trailblazing womenswear collection.

"We've chosen our winner because it was a collection that had showed a great body of work, it had a great sense of creative development and an interesting collection," said the judging panel, which this year included Anna Clarke of Tu Sainsbury's, Sadie Frost, Holly Fulton, Matthew Harding and Levi Palmer of Palmer Harding, Sarah Harris, Ryan Lo, Carlos Nazario of Fantastic Man, and Fabio Piras of CSM MA. "It was experimental and had immediate impact during the show."


North, who said after the show that the she hopes her sustainable approach is adopted more widely in the fashion industry, was one of four winners to come from the Edinburgh College of Art, making it one of the institutions most successful Graduate Fashion Weeks to date.

Other major awards to note were the Tu Scholarships that were awarded to menswear designer Amy Vanderwel from Nottingham Trent University and womenswear designer, Laura Gillings from Bath Spa University, as well as the Catwalk Textiles Award which was scooped by Maddie Williams from the Edinburgh College of Art. But the rest of the winners of the event (which saw 460 catwalk shows take place and 1,500 students take part) deserve high praise.


"Supporting and working with the next generation of talent is the best way to inspire innovation and impact in our industry – better than anyone else, young designers understand the challenges we face and the energy and ideas required to create positive change," said Nadja Swarovski, whose family company was a sponsor of the event.

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