The revision of the Graduate Fashion Foundation 2020 Awards is a reflection of the current Covid-19 situation and of the national change to all UK member’s final year students delivery of their final degree projects, now being completed from home.
Our awards have always been an important part of who we are as a foundation. It allows us to highlight the very best in graduate talent and award excellence. The awards are crucial for attracting industry as it provides a filter to the talent, ensuring that they are seeing the very best work.
Graduate Fashion Foundation used feedback shared from our members to readdress the award submission and criteria to make them as fair as possible around the constraints of; work that had already been completed within the final year of their degree, and the facilities that student have available to them during the lockdown.
All criterion has been updated to reflect a solely digital submission and with smaller quantities of work required for the submissions. We have also added an additional section on all nomination forms to list the changes to the work submitted from the originally planned project.
Addressing the factors that have affected manufacturing courses, the charity has taken the decision to remove the five catwalk awards this year due to the halt in final project manufacturing and the closure of university studios and facilities. The awards have been replaced with four new awards, solely for design courses of the universities who were due to show on the GFW2020 catwalk and who have lost out on the opportunities of the catwalk awards.
It is an exceptional period, we have done our best to adapt to the new situation and we will continue to offer award opportunities to the Class of 2020.
The Graduate Fashion Foundation Awards are open to final year students on courses listed under the membership of our Member University only. Students cannot nominate themselves, all nominations are submitted via course leaders and tutors only.
This year, we're pleased to announce five new awards: the Fashion Innovation Award, the Adaption Award, the Fashion Illustration Award, the Fashion Concept Award and the Range Plan Award. Nominations for these and all other awards must be submitted by the 29th of May, 2020. The timeline following submission is as follows:
Shortlisting Judging: 1st-5th June
Shortlists Announced:10th June
We will also be sharing the shortlists, with work from the graduates, on the Dots on the 10th of June.