Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Vivienne Westwood & Nick Knight´s New Roles

Graduate Fashion Week has been showcasing fashion's future leaders for 25 years, now it's honoured two industry veterans. Nick Knight and Vivienne Westwood have both been appointed as lifetime patrons of the prolific talent platform.

Knight and Westwood join current patrons Christopher Bailey - a Graduate Fashion Week 1991 alumni - and Victoria Beckham.

"He is the most incredible image-maker of his generation, redefining what it means to be a fashion photographer and changing the industry beyond all recognition," Mark Newton-Jones, chairman of GFW, praised Knight. "He has inspired not just a generation of photographers, but of designers, stylists, art directors, and hair and make-up artists, too."

Knight, who has worked closely with GFW's most revered group of graduates, including Stella McCartney and Giles Deacon on projects for ShowStudio.com, said of his appointment: "I am honoured to become a patron of Graduate Fashion Week. I have had the privilege of working with so many creative people and inventive thinkers who have shown their work at the event. Fashion education in the UK is the best in the world - it really supports radical new ways of thinking and working, which creates things we haven't seen before. And that's what fashion is all about."


Westwood, whose appointment coincides with the renaming of the annual GFW Ethical Award to The Vivienne Westwood Ethical Award - a competition in which the winner gains the opportunity to intern at Westwood's studio in London - echoed Knight's joy saying she is delighted to become a patron for GFW and to create the award under her name.

Asserting her stance on climate change, Westwood said: "Buy less, choose well, make it last. If people bought only beautiful clothes that would be climate revolution."

Ahead of the event, which runs from June 5 to June 8, London-based photographer Hanna Moon lensed the work of nine of the most talented graduating designers, for a series entitled The Stars of Tomorrow, including: Anna Madelena Currie of Edinburgh College of Art; Paria Farzaneh and Hannah Page of Ravensbourne College; Courtney Simon from Northumbria University; Emma Brie of Kingston University London; Olivia Barclay from Nottingham Trent University; Courtney Plumb from Birmingham City University; Louis Trainor-Selwyn of the Manchester School of Art; and Abby Johnson from Bath Spa University.

"The pieces shot by Hannah reflect the strength and the breadth of what's being produced across the UK in some of the world's most respected academic institutions," said Martyn Roberts, director of Graduate Fashion Week. "They display a sense of craft, as well as a sharp eye for concept. They have developed their collections in sophisticated ways, and posess precisely the qualities that future employers attending Graduate Fashion Week are looking for."

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