First Challenge the Fabric Award to launch at LFW

A new fashion award for emerging designers that celebrates creativity and opens up a dialogue about viscose as alternative fabric is to launch during London Fashion Week.

The Challenge the Fabric Award, which aims to celebrate creativity and sustainable progression, has been organised by the Swedish Fashion Council, in partnership with Ekman and Co, and contributing partners, Altri, Arauco, Sanyou Group, and Södra.

The award set to be presented at a catwalk show on September 13, ahead of London Fashion Week, features six designers from around the globe competing for a 30,000 euro prize and includes two London-based designers Harry Freegard studying at Central St. Martins and Paolo Carzana from the University of Westminster.

The other finalists are: Brandon Wen of Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts; Christine-Marie Valtonen of Helsinki’s Aalto University, Anna Bernal of Arnhem’s ArtEZ, and Elena Velez of New York Parsons School.

Each of the finalists will present a selection of their BA collection alongside newly designed viscose looks to a jury of fashion experts, which includes Swedish designer Ann-Sofie Back, founder and designer of Vyner Articles Heikki Salonen, The Gentlewoman’s editor-in-chief Penny Martin, Diet Prada’s founders Tony Liu and Lindsey Schuyler, Re-Edition magazine’s editor in chief Jo Barker, Instagram magazine Th_Rlty_Shw founder Tiffany Godoy, and cloud-rap artist and designer known as Ecco2K, Zak Arogundade.

“This is the first international fashion award launched by the Swedish Fashion Council, connecting young creatives with the industry and across disciplines to create awareness, to push limits and to improve the fashion industry in the long run. We are very excited about the outstanding talent in this first edition,” said Jennie Rosén, chief executive of the Swedish Fashion Council in a statement.

In addition to the catwalk show, there will be a complementary exhibition presenting the viscose looks of Zhenyuan Yang of Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, Yiyuan Sun of Donghua University and Kajsa Willumsen of the Swedish School of Textiles.