DeSigner for tomorrow 2011 Text by Peyman Farahani
HOSTED BY MARC JACOBS
Originally the sponsorship program for aspiring fashion designers was founded by IMg and as a true affair of the heart, it was part of the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Berlin from the very first season. When Peek&Cloppenburg came into the picture in 2009, the program changed its name to “Designer for Tomorrow Award” and the concept changed quintessentially. DfT focuses ever since on really young creatives who just finished or are about to finish their studies and thus are at the very beginning of their career. Today the award show is not only a significant springboard for these newcomers, it would be unthinkable without the support of the family-run business from Düsseldorf. P&C offers the winner a tailormade, long-term sponsorship program and the chance to show his own design individually at the next autumn/winter fashion show. Last summer's winner, Berlin-based Parsival Cserer, has seen the help of P&C in promoting his career and presenting his debut coll-
ection as part of the MBFW Berlin in January 2011. Today you can find highlights from his collection at selected P&C fashion department stores. Now five young finalists have been chosen once again and will be showing their collections to the public for the first time on 6 July 2011 – a stone's throw away from the Brandenburger Tor. The new winner awaits as before a unique opportunity. But this summer, for the first time, the DfT-sponsorship program has a patron who has been accompanying the talents right from the outset. No less than Marc Jacobs – self-made fashion designer, New York's favorite and since 1997 fashion director of Louis Vuitton – has taken on the patronage of the DfT-Award. He was involved in all stages of the award selection process and will be present in the german capital on the due date to announce together with the jury board this year's “Designer for Tomorrow” during the MBFW Berlin. “I feel like I am here to listen and see." The truth is though that the New York designer doesn't really like to see himself as a judge. “I feel like I am here to listen and see. I did respond to the work that I received and made a sort of selection, but my interest was really in hearing what each designer has to say and how they express their ideas through their work and their choice of fabrics and colors, the textiles, the silhouettes and what their
work says about their world and the world they think they live in, we live in,” says Jacobs, who was himself in this kind of a position, nearly three decades ago. Marc Jacobs relates to these young aspiring fashion designers. He wants to support more than anything else. Even the nervousness of the finalists who are only steps away from the goal is a feeling that he shares. “I was very impressed, or I am very impressed.” Marc Jacobs doesn't shy away from recognizing that he still experiences that sort of anxiety although many years have passed. “It's still like that for me each season, each time I do a show, each time I present work whether it's to an editor of a magazine or whether it's to the press, or journalists or during a fashion show. I still have that same kind of fear.” About his impression of the collections of the designers he has seen for the first time, Jacobs says succinctly and convincingly, “I was very impressed, or I am very impressed.” This year's finalists are Marc Buscha, Lena Hasibether, Alexandra Kiesel and Markus Schmidbauer – who come from germany – as well as Jonathan Christopher Hofwegen – who was born in Manila in the Philippines but grew up in the Netherlands. Some hard to remember names but what does it matter, one of them will be the new Designer of Tomorrow. http://www.designer-for-tomorrow.com
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