Global fashion design competition launches

London - A new fashion design competition, Fashion Crowd Challenge, has launched to open a “gateway” to all emerging designers around the world, with the winners taking a slice of a 250,000 dollar prize pot to assist with their brand launches.

The Fashion Crowd Challenge Council, headed up by chairperson Kwangsu Cho, aims to find a designer who can combine “fashion and collective intelligence technology”. Unlike other design competitions, this will not be judged by experts within fashion, rather the entries will be evaluated and selected by the general public.

According to the competition website, all entrants will be evaluated by the FCC Council’s own unique algorithm called Crowd Evaluation System, where it selects evaluators from the general public and from peer designers, manages the evaluation logistics, and generates fair, unbiased, and constructive evaluations to generate the finalists.

The competition is open to anyone over 14-years-old, anywhere in the world, and you don’t need to have professional design qualifications to enter, all you have to do is sign up by September 9 on fashioncrowdchallenge.com.

Fashion Crowd Challenge open to all designers

Designer are being asked to submit designs that, “best reflect their personality,” with two topics for consideration, ‘local street fashion’ and ‘fashion designs for local trend-setters’, and designers are being asked to prioritise the use of local materials and avoid items such as gold, diamond and fur, as well as to keep manufacturing expenses under 200 dollars. Entries can cover apparel, underwear, accessories, or jewellery for women, men, kids and seniors categories.

"This challenge serves as a moment-in-time to revisit the core of fashion and to add value to the industry," explains Kwangsu Cho. "The FCC Council seeks to identify outstanding designers who present designs that recognise and address the public's preferences and to support their entrance into the global market.”

The top winners chosen by the FCC Council panel of evaluators will be given the opportunity to hold a fashion show and shoot an editorial with a yet-to-be-named fashion magazine, and they will receive money from the prize pot of 250,000 dollars, including 100,000 dollars for the final winner.

Pre-registration is open now until September 9, with design submission taking place from September 10 to October 7. Crowd evaluation takes place from October 8-15, with the winner will be announced on October 16.