The Graduate Fashion Foundation Invite Entries For The Inaugural Hilary Alexander Sustainable Trailblazer Award
Image By Courtesy of Graduate Fashion Week
The award was created to capture the vision of the renowned UK based Fashion Journalist and Honorary Lifetime President of the Graduate Fashion Foundation charity, Hilary Alexander OBE, by reflecting Hilary’s enthusiasm for fresh, sustainable and future thinking fashion.
This previous catwalk award has been updated as a design award and created to capture and reflect the charity’s enthusiasm for new, fresh, and future thinking fashion design.
The winning collection and portfolio of developmental research must provide a refreshing and innovative direction, it must address the important issue of sustainability; and illustrate ground-breaking, fashion-forward thinking.
Entry Requirements:
· Three or more full looks in a collection
· A portfolio of developmental research
· The collection can be menswear, womenswear or gender fluid.
The winning collection and body of work must address the following:
· Sustainability, evidenced by a reduction on environmental impact
· Be socially responsible
· Be refreshing in it’s thinking
· Be ‘pushing the boundaries’ of fashion in an innovative direction
Judging criteria will be based on the following:
· Evidence of the sustainability of the collection
· Throughout the entire project you must clearly demonstrate how the project/product is lowering its environmental impact, and/or be beneficial to the environment, culture or community from which the materials are sourced.
· Evidence of innovation in cut and silhouette
· Experimentation in sustainable materials, texture and surface decoration
· Visual excitement with photographic appeal
· A cohesive body of work within a portfolio that showcases the broad research base and demonstrates research that clearly displays the relationship to the individual’s ideas.
· An outstanding collection, that clearly demonstrates an exceptional response to contemporary future thinking sustainable design demands in its’ creativity, design, cut, craftsmanship, use of colour and innovative fabric.
Entry:
· A supporting statement to explain the nominated student’s entry including images demonstrating that it meets all the criteria as detailed above.
· An initial digital submission of no more than 15 x pages for the nomination shortlisting. The full physical body of work and samples will be displayed for the final judging session.
· The nomination can be a maximum of 10mb, illustrating the final project and a supporting statement.
Process:
The Sustainable Trailblazer Collection Award will be judged in two stages. All nominated students will have to submit a supporting statement for scrutiny at the pre-event shortlisting by industry experts.
Part 1:
Monday 22nd May 2023, 18:00 hours - Deadline for submission, academic staff are to nominate 2 final year students and the nominations must be made by clicking on the link: https://forms.gle/23APMZJokm7YDNn66
Selection:
Industry experts will shortlist 12 students from the entries submitted. Thursday 1st June, 2023 - The names of the shortlisted students will be announced.
Part 2, Judging:
Awards Judging will be onsite at GFW in central London. Shortlisted students must bring their full entry for the final judging. This can be physical work plus digital elements if required. The judging will be an opportunity to talk through the students work, ideas and answer questions from the judges.
All nominated students must attend the full judging day during GFW and ensure they attend all talks, meetings and judging sessions as well as the end of day Awards Presentation and celebratory networking event. Winners will receive promotion across the GFF networks.
