Thomas Tait Takes Home The Six-Figure LVMH Prize

by Paige Reddinger

A stylish win: British designer Thomas Tait  scored the inaugural LVMH Young Fashion Designer Prize. The designer was granted $409,270 to help grow his business as well as a full year of coaching. The recipients got sized up by a jury of 42 industry heavyweights like Fabien Baron and Stephen Gan as well as designers including Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld, Nicolas Ghesquière, Raf Simons, Phoebe Philo, Riccardo Tisci, and Humberto Leon and Carol Lim helped choose the recipients. Executive vice president of Louis Vuitton, Delphine Arnault, headed the initiative, alongside LVMH executives Pierre-Yves Roussel and Jean-Paul Claverie. The LVMH Young Fashion Designer Prize was launched in November of last year, and today marks the distribution of the first awards. The LVMH Prize is open to designers under 40 years old who have presented and sold at least two women’s or men’s ready-to-wear collections.

Other award winners included Hood by Air’s Shayne Oliver and Miuniku’s sister duo Nikita and Tina Sutradhar. Each received $135,946 and a year of mentoring. CG by Chris Gelinas, Gabriele Colangelo, Simon Porte Jacquemus, Tillmann Lauterbach, Tim Coppens, Simone Rocha, Vika Gazinskaya and Suno by Erin Beatty and Max Osterweis were among the other finalists. The diverse array of designers have all kinds of international origins, hailing from Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, Ireland, India, Russia, Canada, and the U.S. Three winners who’ve just completed a university program in fashion design will be chosen each year to receive $13,595 each and join the design team at an LVMH brand for one year. This year, the lucky coeds included Flavien Juan Nunez of Institut Français de la Mode in Paris, Peter Do of FIT in New York, and Teruhiro Hasegawa of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. 

A full list of the panel of experts that consulted on the prize is below:

Imran Amed, Founder and Editor of Business of Fashion (London)

Sarah Andelman, Creative director of Colette (Paris)

Bernard Arnault, Chairman and CEO of LVMH

Fabien Baron, Art director, Founder of Baron&Baron (New York)

Tim Blanks, Editor-at-large for Style.com (London)

Mariacarla Boscono, Supermodel and muse (Rome)

Angelica Cheung, Editor in Chief of Vogue China (Beijing)

Alexandre de Betak, Founder of Bureau Betak (Paris)

Godfrey Deeny, Editor at large, Fashion, for Le Figaro (Paris)

Patrick Demarchelier, photographer (New York)

Babeth Djian, Editor in chief of Numéro (Paris)

Linda Fargo, Senior Vice President of Bergdorf Goodman (New York)

Jo-Ann Furniss, Writer, editor and creative director (London)

Chantal Gaemperle, LVMH Group Executive Vice President for Human Resources and Synergies (Paris)

Stephen Gan, Founder of Fashion Media Group LLC (New York)

Julie Gilhart, Consultant (New York)

Katie Grand, Editor in chief of Love Magazine (London)

Jefferson Hack, Co-Founder and Editorial Director of Dazed Group (London)

Laure Hériard Dubreuil, Co-founder and chief Executive of the Webster (Miami)

Adrian Joffe, Chief executive officer of Dover Street Market International (London)

Sylvia Jorif, Journalist at ELLE Magazine (Paris)

Marta Jurin, winner of the LVMH Prize Fashion Scout competition (Zagreb)

Hirofumi Kurino, Creative Director of United Arrows (Tokyo)

Linda Loppa, Director of Polimoda (Florence)

Natalie Massenet, Founder & Executive Chairman of Net-a-Porter (London)

Pat McGrath, Makeup Artist (New York)

Marigay McKee, President of Saks Fifth Avenue (New York)

Sarah Mower, Contributing editor of Vogue US (Londres)

Camilla Nickerson, Stylist (New York)

Lilian Pacce, Fashion editor and writer (Sao Paulo)

Jean-Jacques Picart, Fashion and Luxury Consultant (Paris)

Gaia Repossi, Creative director of Repossi (Paris)

Olivier Rizzo, Stylist (Antwerp)

Carine Roitfeld, Founder of CR Fashion Book (Paris)

Olivier Saillard, Director of the Galliera Museum (Paris)

Marie-Amelie Sauvé, Stylist (Paris)

Carla Sozzani, Founder of 10 Corso Como (Milan)

Charlotte Stockdale, Stylist (London)

Tomoki Sukezane, Stylist (Tokyo)

Natalia Vodianova, Supermodel and philanthropist (Paris)

Louise Wilson, Course Director of the Fashion MA at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (London)

Dasha Zhukova, Editor in chief of Garage Magazine and Founder of Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow)

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