The 2023 Eight International Woolmark Prize Finalists have been announced, including eight businesses from eight different countries.
They include Italian designer Marco Rambaldi, Italian menswear designer Robyn Lynch, Danish knitwear designer Amalie Rouge Hove, Italian label Paolina Russo’s design duo Lucile Guilmard and Paolina Russo, and Nigerian entrepreneur Adeju Thompson, who started the Lagos Space Programme.
The Woolmark Company promotes the products of approximately 60,000 Australian woolgrowers. Their managing director John Roberts remarked that this year’s pick “represents the next generation of creative game-changers who want to make fashion for a better tomorrow.”
He continued, “As the fashion and textile industry continues to evolve among an ever-changing landscape, we hope that our support throughout the International Woolmark Prize will inspire and accelerate creative and business plans of our eight finalists.”
Roberts explained that the topic of this year’s prize is “Dialogue” to “spark creative conversations across all generations and geographical regions.”
“We view this as a celebration of creatives finding common ground, but it also represents our objective to link up fresh design brains with seasoned business leaders so that they can brainstorm ways to make their businesses more environmentally friendly and prosperous.
There has never been a better time for cross-industry cooperation than now, amid a war, energy crisis, and global health pandemic. Businesses of all stripes need to work together, and he believes the Woolmark Prize can help facilitate that.
Each brand will receive 60,000 Australian dollars to create a merino wool capsule for their upcoming fall 2023 lines. The winning capsule will be chosen based on how well it “highlights the innate versatility, inventive character, and eco-credentials of merino wool.” The grand prize consists of 200,000 Australian dollars (about $132,230), stocking at major department stores, and business mentoring. Reading Japanese Fashion could be an excellent way to improve your knowledge or form a fashion perspective.
A second runner-up will receive the Karl Lagerfeld Award for Innovation and a monetary reward of AU$100,000 (about $66,115). One of the global wool industry’s most prestigious honors, the Woolmark Supply Chain Award, is traditionally given out just before the championship game.
Experts in the field, such as Holli Rogers, Farfetch’s chief brand officer, and Shaway Yeh, creator of YehYehYeh, China’s premier sustainability agency, choose the winners.
This past April, the International Woolmark Prize was awarded to British Guyanese designer Saul Nash, who would receive a cash prize of $30,000. He was also given the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design ten days later.
Matty Bovan, Richard Malone, Bode, Rahul Mishra, Edward Crutchley, Matthew Miller, Karl Lagerfeld, Yves Saint Laurent, and Valentino Garavani are among the previous winners of the International Woolmark Prize.
While Roberts acknowledged that “high inflation from high energy costs is having a real impact on demand,” he also saw “enormous opportunities as more and more consumers demand more sustainable fashion,” a theme that many finalists have been working on for their Woolmark Prize capsule collections in recent years.
The Woolmark Company, he claimed, has “never been better positioned to take on these issues and in many cases turn them into actual possibilities” thanks to the ideas of these rising stars.
“Australian Merino wool continues to make great strides thanks to innovations. The trend toward more relaxed dress has reduced demand for tailored clothing. Innovative knitting techniques enable the production of high-performance garments with novel builds while reducing fabric waste, and novel merino wool fabrications provide options to the synthetic textiles that dominate the market.
“We are so pleased to promote Australian wool as the finest wool in the world because of its exceptional quality and the unique, inherent, and natural traits it possesses,” Roberts added.
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