IYDC NEWS 2020

Review all the latest news of International Young Designer Contest.

International Young Designers Contest 2020 summed up its results

Friday, 16 October 2020

On October 15 the online media conference summed up the results of one of the largest and most influential international fashion events in Eastern and Central Europe - the International Young Designers Contest.

The contest is organized by the Ukrainian Fashion Council with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation. IED - Istituto Europeo di Design is the IYDC partner, award fund contributor and co-organizer of the online Fashion Visual Art Residence.

Despite the pandemic this year the Contest has a record number of finalists, presenting 19 collections from 12 countries: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Moldova, Poland, Slovenia and Ukraine. All finalists are the winners of national young designer contests or those young designers, who have been selected by the recognized fashion institutions in their countries. This pre-selection process guarantees all finalists are of the highest talent and caliber.

For the first time an “independent participant” was invited by the organizing committee. This finalist was selected via a rigorous process of reviewing the applications from counties, where IYDC does not have yet an established partnership with national young designer national contests This year’s independent participant represented the Netherlands.

"Young talents are emerging and need support no matter what is happening in the world. We at IYDC thought that it would be unfair and irresponsible to deprive promising and talented designers the opportunity to present themselves and to demonstrate their creative potential beyond their personal pages in Social media. As the result we transformed the Contest into online format, as we believed that it met in the best way the requirements of the situation. And we have made it happened.

The international professional network of partnering organizations played the curtail role in it. Together were looking at options and for joint solutions. I’m extremely happy that the final number of countries participated in IYDC 2020 has exceeded our initial expectation. Today we formally will close the edition 2020 by announcing the winner, and already tomorrow, during the round table we will already talk about the future of IYDC”, - says IYDC project manager, Victoria Kharchenko.

The IYDC Organizing Committee conducted a special fashion video shoot and created online presentations for each finalist and their collections, which are available on iydc.info (edition 2020).

The collections of the contestants were evaluated by the internationally recognized fashion experts of IYDC jury from five countries: Liana Satenstein (USA), Giovanni Ottonello (Italy), Riccardo Terzo (Italy), Yu Masui (Japan), Philippe Pourhashemi (Belgium), Anna Barr (France).

“I am proud to be a part of this international contest and happy to see the emerging designers, who are going on nevertheless these hard times. This year the contest has brought together very different young talents. It is such a good moment to see this diversity in creativity. It is what we need in fashion industry actually.”- said during the conference one of the jury experts, Riccardo Terzo, fashion editor of Vogue talents and contributor to Vogue Italy.

“Certainly, it was a challenge to do the whole evaluation process online. We like to touch the clothes, we like to be face-to-face, but I am impressed how everyone adapted to the current situation. I really appreciate how many young designers are choosing sustainable design methods. It is very important that they bring this message to their countries, too. It will make an impact in the whole industry within the next several years”, - mentioned another jury expert, Liana Satenstein, the senior fashion writer at Vogue.com (USA).

On the conference the jury announced the IYDC 2020 Grand Prix winner: Tess Van Zalinger, who receives $ 5,000 award from the organizing committee and a scholarship for a three week course by her choice at f the IED-Istituto Europeo di Design.

Watch the video presentation of Tess Van Zalinger:

For the first time IYDC conducted the public vote. Video presentations of the collections were released in three blocks on IYDC official Facebook page on October 12, 13 and 14. Every day, social media users could vote for the collection that impressed them the most. IYDC 2020 partner COCOS Fashion and COCOS Trade awarded three designers. For designers Dora Hegeds (Hungary) and Oleksandra Volovikova COCOS Fashion and COCOS Trade will develop the logo for their brands. Boryana Vatova (Bulgaria), the leader of the third day, who also got the highest total number of votes will receive full branding development and consulting support for promoting her brand on the markets of Europe and Israel.

Fashion Visual Art Residence was in the schedule of IYDC for the second year. However, this year was hold online, challenging its participants to do the complete photo shoot of a fashion story online, when the team members of working international groups were physically located miles away from each other. At the conference the Curator of Fashion Visual Art Residence, Giovanni Ottonello, announced the winner: the young Ukrainian photographer - Maria Pravosud. She is awarded a scholarship for a summer course at the IED - Istituto Europeo di Design.

“We have seen Fashion Week in many parts of the world. We have seen how some brands proposed the same communications instead of something truly new. I said to the designers that they are the future of fashion and together we must propose new solutions. Here at IED we are always looking for new talents and doing our best to support them. This is our goal”, - said the Art Curator of Fashion Visual Art Residence, Giovanni Ottonello.

IYDC 2020 Finalists:

Azerbaijan: