Mother of Pearl, the sportswear-inspired brand founded in 2002 and Palmer Harding, the men’s and women’s shirt label founded in 2012 are the proud recipients of BFC/Vogue Fashion Fund 2017. For the first time in the history of this prestigious Fashion Fund, which awards £200,000 and provides mentoring to up to three British-based emerging designers with the potential for becoming global fashion forces, there are two recipients. Keeping in mind the adverse effects of Brexit, The organisation decided to ‘spread the benefit’ of the prize to two labels this year. Though this split is not something very new, the American counterpart of the benefit, CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund has also done something like this, when it had three recipients, instead of two.
The fund aims to support British designers and businesses from start-ups to established brands with a focus on providing key expertise, and as a result has chosen to open up the prize money to be shared between up to three recipients, enabling the fund to benefit multiple designers at pivotal stages of growth and development.
Alexandra Shulman, Editor, British Vogue, has informed that the two recipients Mother of Pearl and Palmer Harding are very different in terms of the clothes they offer and the way they operate. But both these brands was able to convince the jury that they will be backing brands with strong potential who understood how they could grow and who had and exciting vision.
