Young designers get Kering recognition for ‘positive fashion’

Luxury fashion house Kering and the Centre For Sustainable Fashion have awarded the very first Kering Awards for Sustainable Fashion to Neliana Fuenmayor (pictured far right) and Ingrid Rautemberg (pictured right).

Following an initial brief under the topic of “the positive fashion product”, the two winning fashion students received a €10,000 grant for their work, as well as an internship opportunity with Stella McCartney (Fuenmayor) and Alexander McQueen (Rautemberg).

MA Fashion Entrepreneurship & Innovation graduate, Fuenmayor comes from Venezuela and moved to London in 2006 to complete her a BA (Hons) in Fashion Design and Technology at the London College of Fashion. She is passionate about the business of fashion and how it can be as creative and inspiring as design itself.

According to Fuenmayor, the fspotlight should not be on the next big name, but its next big achievement. To become pioneers of transparency in the fashion sector, she believes in communicating the powerful stories behind their positive products: “The moment a customer buys into a product is vital to the whole supply chain. It is a sacred moment where all resources and efforts put into that one product are validated and with it, the stories that will be carried throughout the lifetime of the item.”

Rautemberg, currently pursuing an MA in Fashion Futures at the London College of Fashion, focused on alternatives to plastic ocean pollution and came up with her own bioplastic formula which she calls “e-skin”, mixing natural ingredients such as nuts, seaweed and agave to use in applications for textile print: “My objective in life, is to come up with fashion that isn’t just appreciated for its aesthetic qualities, but to make a difference.”