Growing number of emerging designer competitions staged by fashion labels to foster creativity

Alongside the main emerging designer competitions, like the Andam Prize, the LVMH Prize and the Hyères Festival, countless initiatives are flourishing as the fashion industry searches for hidden gems. A growing number of labels, often in association with fashion academies, have launched their own emerging designer competition, looking for young stylists or talented artisans that could potentially join their creative teams. A way to deal with the dearth of apprentices in the manual craftsmanship trades, and to inject fresh creative energy into a label.

Among the most recent initiatives, French luxury group Kering has selected the winners of its new competition for sustainable jewellery design, the ‘Kering Generation Award X Jewellery’, staged in partnership with CIBJO (the international association for the fine and costume jewellery, goldsmithing and precious gems trades) and the Poli.Design department of Milan’s Politecnico University. Kering invited 22 start-ups and students to create a piece of jewellery from scraps. The competition’s first edition, whose theme was ‘second chance, first choice’, was held on June 7 in Las Vegas, during the JCK World Jewellery Show.

The winner in the ‘student’ category was Korean designer Lee Min Seo from Seoul’s Hongik University, who makes jewellery using leather offcuts from the manufacture of janggu, a traditional Korean percussion instrument. Her reward will be an internship at one of Kering’s jewellery brands, Boucheron, Pomellato, Dodo, or Qeelin. The winner among the start-ups was Chinese brand Ianyan, whose jewellery creations are made from imperfect and/or cracked stones. The two winners will also be mentored by experts from Politecnico’s faculty in Milan.

At the end of 2023, Louis Vuitton launched, in partnership with 30 schools around the world, the ‘Accessories Design Graduates Initiative’, a competition recognising innovation and creativity in leather goods and accessories design. Chinese designer Kexin Zhang, trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tianjin (TAFA) and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, where she specialised in jewellery design, has recently won the competition’s second edition, thanks to “her sense of detail and exceptional expertise.”

Zhang will join Louis Vuitton’s leather goods and accessories design departments to create new products, said Louis Vuitton. Working alongside the luxury label’s staff, she will design leather goods, accessories and jewellery items, taking part in a comprehensive introduction programme, and she will undoubtedly meet Johnny Coca, head of women’s leather goods at LVMH’s flagship label.

In March, Parisian label Ami presented the fourth AMI x IFM Entrepreneurship Award to Matho, a brand specialising in knitwear designed as an extension of the body, founded by Léa Mathonière Fallot. Matho won €20,000 in prize money and a mentorship. The jury also awarded the Coup de cœur prize to Telmet, an experiential brand led by Léo Ciavarella and César Noyer which combines fashion design and audiovisual creations. Telmet received a €10,000 cash prize. For Ami Paris, the award is a way to give concrete support to emerging designers.

Other labels are hiring emerging designers for special projects, for example one-off collaborations. They see in this approach the opportunity to refresh their offering without losing their brand identity, while creating commercial buzz. In return, they offer visibility to young talents who are often unknown to the public, giving them the chance to design ad hoc capsule collections. This was the case with AZ Factory, for example, as it sought to give continuity to the Alber Elbaz brand after the eponymous designer’s death.

Spanish fast-fashion label Mango has recently launched the ‘Mango Collective’ project, “to celebrate the creativity and innovation of emerging brands.” As its first guest stylist, Mango has chosen Anglo-Indian designer Supriya Lele, a finalist at the 2020 LVMH Prize, who has already made a name for herself in London, where she set up her label in 2017. “The goal is to launch one collaboration a year, featuring a collection jointly created with a guest brand or designer, with the idea of building a creative community,” said Mango.

Focus on artisanal and manual craftsmanship

Artisanal skills and handcrafting talent are also very much in demand, as shown by the plethora of initiatives being organised in this field. Loewe, LVMH’s Spanish leather goods label, was one of the first houses to create a craftsmanship award, in 2016, under the aegis of its then creative director Jonathan Anderson. At the end of May, Japanese sculptor Kunimasa Aoki was crowned as the winner of the 2025 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize.

In 2017, French footwear brand J.M. Weston established, through its corporate foundation, the ‘J.M. Weston Foundation Awards’, aimed at promoting an international exchange between young French and Japanese artisans. “The objective is to allow young shoemakers to work  for a period of four weeks at the best workshops in both countries,” said J.M. Weston, adding that the winners must complete during this time  “an exceptional project working with the support of local master craftsmen who will be training them in their methods.”

Each year, J.M. Weston awards four scholarships through this programme, two for French apprentices and two for Japanese ones. The selection of this year’s two Japanese winners is under way, and they will visit the J.M. Weston factory in Limoges, France, in September. The two French winners have already been picked, and are expected to travel to Japan in October, where they will be working at the Scotch Grain factory in Tokyo. The closing ceremony, with the presentation of the completed projects and the awards, will take place in Japan on October 31.

In 2023, Marseilles-based label Sessun launched an international competition for designers under 35 years of age operating in the field of interior design. For the competition’s third edition, Sessun awarded first prize to Sarah El Yousefy and Nina Ouchinsky. Their project will be realised and presented at Galeries Lafayette Haussmann in Paris in September. Second prize went to Gala Vernhes-Chazeau, and third prize to Constant Clesse and Clément Pasquier. Setting up designer competitions allows labels to boost their brand image while supporting the creative generations of tomorrow.