As major fashion Houses gear up to present their first collections under new creative spearheads, rising talent continues to flourish. This year, LVMH hosted the annual LVMH Prize for Young Designers on September 3 at the Foundation Louis Vuitton, where young designers presented their work to a jury of nine creative directors from LVMH Houses: Jonathan Anderson, Sarah Burton, Marc Jacobs, Nicholas Ghesquière, Stella McCartney, Nigo, Phoebe Philo, Silvia Venturini Fendi and Pharell Williams, alongside Delphine Arnault, Jean-Paul Claverie, Sidney Toledano and Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone.
Kicking off the honors, Arnault gave remarks before awarding the LVMH Prize to Soshiotsuki by designer Soshi Otsuki and the Karl Lagerfeld Prize to Steve O Smith and his eponymous brand. The Savoir-Faire Prize, which highlights sustainable innovation and craftsmanship, was earned by Torishéju Dumi of Torishéju. After the announcements, Hypebeast spoke with each winner to discuss what this milestone means for each of them and what they can learn from mentorship.
The LVMH Prize comes along with a 400,000€ endowment and a one-year mentorship program with LVMH experts. Padukone, dressed in head-to-toe Louis Vuitton, presented the prize to 35-year old designer Soshi Otsuki. Otsuki designs menswear ensembles with a keen eye for astute tailoring. Though he navigates global markets, his pieces are intrinsically imbued with a sense of his Japanese heritage, and they’re enriched by high-quality fabrication. He hopes to continue scaling and growing the brand under this mentorship, expanding into every day wearables to round-out his elevated suiting offerings. He was also shortlisted for this same prize a decade ago, bringing this win full circle.
“The quality of the products in my collections has improved a lot [since then]. Working on tailored items won’t change, of course, but I now realize that I need to expand my brand vision to access more people. I want to work on more casual pieces to go well with the tailored pieces as well. And I’ve been doing the brand on my own. So I want to build out my team, consult about merchandising and how to expand to a global market,” Otsuki remarked.
British designer Steve O Smith earned the Karl Lagerfeld Prize for his intricate couture designs, and this award comes alongside a 200,000€ endowment as well as a year-long mentorship program with the LVMH Group. The 33-year old studied at Central Saint Martins before starting his namesake menswear and womenswear label. His process is distinctive and detailed — he brings his sketches to life by using appliqué techniques and creative construction, transforming them from notebook pages to patterns. He spoke about this process and how he hopes to evolve in it through LVMH’s guidance.
“What I find really gratifying about my process is that because I'm forced to draw so much, my designs evolve and change a lot. This still feels surreal. We really have a bottleneck in production right now. We have more orders than we're able to fulfill, so what I'm going to do with the money, to speak crudely, is to address that bottleneck by fixing the issues of having the necessary machinery, and we need more people sewing. We need to just expand. And so that's really what I'm going to focus on doing,” Steve reflected.
Representing England once again, Torishéju Dumi of Torishéju took home the Savoir-Faire Prize. The 32-year-old womenswear and menswear designer will receive a 200,000€ endowment, a one-year LVMH mentorship and support from the LVMH Métiers d’Excellence through a partnership with embroidery specialist Maison Vermont. This will grant her 50,000€ in embellishments for her next collection. Dumi hails from North London and aims to consistently infuse her Nigerian-Brazilian heritage into her designs. She draws on family folklore, religion and the spiritual in her clothing, which takes on sculptural qualities.
Dumi shared, “The brand is really rooted in an obsession with shape, form and texture. It's about taking timeless pieces and then exaggerating them ever so slightly to a point where you have this uncanny feeling where you look at something and you know what it is, but you're aware that something's a bit odd. It's all about creating these timeless pieces that can fit effort effortlessly into your wardrobe,” she continues, “It's truly extraordinary to receive this honor because I've always loved craft. I work with my hands. And I also crafted something that's rooted in history and I utterly adore history. I think it's so important for you to know the past, to know your present, to know where you're going. And I feel, to me, that's what craft is.”
Each winner will also receive an allowance from the Nona Source platform, an organization that upcycles deadstock materials from the group’s Fashion and Leather Goods brands, emphasizing circularity. Passing the torch to the next generation of creatives, the ceremony also recognized three recent fashion graduates: Louna Clouzel of La Cambre, Brussels, Sophia Sacchetti of Parsons Paris and Peiwen Mao of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp. The growing designers and their alma maters will receive 10,000€ each, and they will learn from the studios at Kenzo, Louis Vuitton Homme and Dior womenswear.
This won’t be the last you see of these prize winners, so stay tuned for their upcoming collections.
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