Artsthread & Gucci’s Global Design Graduate Show 2021 Textile Winners Announced
Created in collaboration with Gucci, Artsthread’s Global Design Graduation Show announced the winners of the second edition of the 2020-21 art and design graduate contest.
A total of 5,211 students participated in the initiative in a year-end project that spans four categories: fashion / accessories / textiles, digital / visual communication / films, products / architecture / interiors, and fine arts / photography / crafts.
The jury of the contest has expanded from all areas of their respective industries.
The Fashion / Accessories / Textiles panel included Levi’s Men’s Design Director, Stephen Burns, GQ Editor, Dylan Jones, Marimekko’s Chief Creative Director, Rebecca Bay and more.
Applicants were instructed to submit the entire creative process for criticism in front of the judges, not just the project. In the fashion-specific category, eight winners representing different disciplines were selected.
For womenswear, Yvonne Schichtel won with her project ‘Lost and Found’, which questioned the gender labels consumers attach to objects, through a collection utilising repurposed materials.
Beth Kip, on the other hand, took a more nature-inspired approach for her winning menswear proposal, ‘West Kip’. Kip reimagined traditional Scottish attire into new purposeful garments to demonstrate a circular clothing line.
Oscar Keene won in the fashion communication category, with his project ‘Fluid’. The project presented a zero-waste digital prototyping solution to slow fashion production, offering a multidisciplinary alternative to fast fashion, in consideration of queer bodies and selfhood.
‘Morphogenesis’, the winning sustainable fashion project by Bea Brücker, also explored digital design combined with biodesign techniques. In her proposal, biodesign is seen as a political movement as part of an alternate virtual world, which she uses to explain sustainable production processes.
Additional winners included Yuzhao Huang’s ‘The Spomeniks’ homeware piece, Jennifer Milleder’s ‘Before the Mirror’, looking at dandyism as a spectacle, Sina Dyks’ ‘Stimuli Wiring System’, a sustainable textiles installation exploring colour and texture, and Caitilin Yates’ ‘Cotswold Luvvies’, a collection designed using repurposed materials from midland England.
