The winners of the European Fashion Award FASH 2016

Julian Weth and Aylin Tomta. Photo: © Bernhard Ludewig / SDBI

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The winners of the European Fashion Award FASH 2016 have been selected. The awards will be announced at the Berlin Fashion Week in summer 2016.

Over the duration of two days the jury consisting of international experts from high fashion and high street, industry, retail, communications and the media evaluated the entries according to predetermined criteria to select the winners of the European Fashion Award FASH 2016.

International Jury

Jury members included: Margareta van den Bosch (Stockholm), Creative Advisor responsible for the guest collection at H&M, Antonio Cristaudo (Florence), Global Marketing Development Manager for the international men’s fashion exhibition Pitti Uomo, and one of the world’s foremost experts on young designers, Jutta Kraus (Paris/Los Angeles), who founded the fashion label of the same name together with Bernhard Willhelm, Sébastien Meunier (Antwerp), Artistic Director at Ann Demeulemeester, fashion and portrait photographer Franco P. Tettamanti (Paris), well-known designers Michael Sontag and Joel S. Horwitz, as well as SDBI Director Joachim Schirrmacher (all three based in Berlin).

The Winners of the European Fashion Award FASH 2016
The actual awards will be announced at the Berlin Fashion Week in summer 2016; they are NOT nominations. Personal invitations to the award ceremony will be sent out.

Category Students
Flora Sophie Taubner and Lars Dittrich, Burg Giebichenstein University of Art & Design Halle

Aylin Tomta, Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences

Julian Weth, Akademie JAK, Hamburg

Category Graduate Projects
Agnė Alaburdaitė, Vilnius Academy of Art

Katharina Buczek, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen

Rani Maria Lange, Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences

151 Participants from 27 Countries
151 students from 27 countries entered the global competition. Applications came from Europe, Asia and America. The European Fashion Award FASH 2016 covered the topic “Change” and looked for visions for a new era. The scope included these questions: How can fashion react to all the changes wrought by conflicts and catastrophes, globalization and digitalization? What are the visions? Who will ride the wave of change and claim the future?

Mentoring Program  and Fashion Shooting
As early as this January, six of the seven winners were able to experience the Berlin Fashion Week as a part of the SDBI Mentoring Program. Upon invitation by the exhibitions, designers and organizers they were able to visit shows by Vladimir Karaleev, Perret Schaad, Nobi Talai or Augustin Teboul, met jury member Michael Sontag and FASH alumnus Tim Labenda at the Berliner Modesalon, participated in a fashion reception held by the Newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and visited the exhibitions Show & Order, Premium, Seek, Green Showroom and Selvedge Run. These activities allowed them to gain important insights and generate first contacts for their future careers.

In cooperation with the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) the 2^nd Mentoring Day is planned for April at the Wissenschaftsforum Berlin at Gendarmenmarkt. Designers such as former SDBI winner and DAAD scholarship recipient Adrian Sommerauer (Senior Designer Dorothee Schumacher), will report on their experiences, and experts will share advice during portfolio consulting sessions. The focus will be on getting to know the mentors.

One day earlier, Franco P. Tettamanti will photograph the winning collections from the European Fashion Award FASH 2016. The multi-award-winning fashion and portrait photographer based in Paris works for clients such as Dior, Louis Vuitton, Akris, Vivienne Westwood, Universal Music, Madame Figaro or Prestige Magazine Hong Kong.

In combination with cash prizes and the mentoring program the photo shoot is a significant component of the European Fashion Award FASH 2016, valued overall at 80,000 Euro.

The European Fashion Award FASH
The European Fashion Award FASH is considered one of the most important international endorsement awards for fashion students, and has been active as a platform for the new generation of designers since 2005. Winners are ensured a promising career in the future. Today they work for internationally renowned companies like Adidas, Hugo Boss, G-Star or Schumacher, for designers like Wolfgang Joop and Vivienne Westwood, or have their own label like Tim Labenda. Many of them have been honored with additional awards.

The European Fashion Award FASH is an annual competition by the not-for-profit Stiftung der Deutschen Bekleidungsindustrie (German Fashion Industry Foundation), in short SDBI. Klaus Steilmann, at the time Europe’s largest manufacturer of women’s fashion, founded SDBI in 1978.

Today’s supporters of the work of SDBI include Messe München and the members of the SDBI Circle of Friends: Allude, Bueronardin, Closed as well as Freitag.