Mercedes-Benz YFI Award

The panel of Mercedes-Benz Young Fashion Industry Award are happy to announce the six finalists for the competion of 2011. The finalists will all show their collections in a final runway show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week 16-18 of August 2010. Following the show, the winner will be announced.

The prize includes the chance to have an own runway show in the regular A/W 2011 show slate and to coordinate with the Berns fashion team to bring the fashion presentation to life before hundreds of fashion editors, buyers and industry members. All production costs are courtesy of Mercedes-Benz and Berns Salonger. Total award value is 100,000 SEK towards the runway show.

THE FINALISTS 2010/2011

Fanny Ollas, former student at Beckman College of Design
"My brand should be a label for liberation. You cannot start a fire without a spark."

Karin Malm – student at Central Saint Martin
"As a final year student in Central St Martins College in London the main purpose for the my degree collection was to create a unique style based on my personal memories."
 
Sophie Nauclér
"I have a passion.  A passion for my favorite fabric - rubber latex. Hence my intention is to dress the strong woman who can stand on her own, while still keeping her femininity intact, like a flower with thorns."

Klara Sjons Nilsson
"My design vision is to create and develop my visual world in clothes and fashion."
 
Elin Sundling, Swedish School of Textiles
"My collection is a captured moment of my life, like a photograph, and when I look at it I see what I felt three months ago."

Maryam Avalinejad, Beckmans College of Design
"I want my work to affect and raise an awareness within people. As a designer of this collection I strive to maintain a dialogue and show the beauty of the cultural globalization."

Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week presents the Young Fashion Industry Award to an emerging young Swedish designer who has not only demonstrated past achievement, but also the potential for future success in fashion. 

The YFI Award hopes not only to identify new design talent, but also to honour these young rising stars. This season, a jury of fashion industry experts at the top of their professions were asked to judge from over 200 entries submitted by a vast number of skilled designers, based on leadership, passion, and vision. From an array of sartorial artists with incredibly varied aesthetic motivations and methods, only the most creative, unique, and memorable designers were chosen as finalists. Of these five finalists, one has been chosen to receive the YFI Award.

The YFI Award covers all the expenses of a runway show on schedule at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week , the preeminent showcase event for fashion in Scandinavia. 

Besides being a grand expression of the designer's vision, the fashion show is also the vehicle through which a designer markets each collection to press, buyers, and customers essential for company growth and prosperity. Such an event represents a great opportunity, but also a great expense. A scholarship of sorts, the YFI Award makes it possible for promising design talents to gain the publicity and praise which they so deserve by sponsoring the production of a show on one of the most respected catwalks in Northern Europe.

The award allows the designer to focus on what he does best, perfecting his creative vision in a collection, without it being clouded by practical drudgeries and financial matters.

Today more than ever, fashion demands innovation and is fueled by uncompromising change. Every season, we look for something different, something fresh, something new. We congratulate all the finalists for their successes, and salute them for inspiring us to challenge norms, to seek novel methods of expression, and to distinguish ourselves from the crowd, as they themselves have done.

Karin Malm - the third winner of the YFI Award

I wanted to create a certain atmosphere, in this case it conveys a little mysticism and hidden layers. I remember some Romany women who used to live close to my house when I was little, this memory together with the experience of an encounter with a Romany woman last autumn has inspired my colletion. I also found inspiration from may grandfathers creative paintings.

This award is sponsord by Mercedes-Benz

Panel

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