LVMH reveals Young Fashion Designer Prize panel experts

French luxury holding company LVMH has announced its chosen forty international

fashion experts who have been tasked to help select the first winner of the LVMH Young Fashion Designer Prize, which was launched last November by Delphine Arnault.

Applicants have until February 2 to apply for the award, after which 30 semi-finalists will be sent to Paris during Fashion week to show their collections. That is when the panel experts step in, as the semi-finalists must present their collections to the panel, which will then help select the ten finalists.

Among the select forty fashion insiders, which includes prominent editors and stylists: Net-a-Porter founder and CEO Natalie Massenet, stylist Olivier Rizzo, editor-in-chief for Vogue China Angelica Cheung, stylist Camilla Nickerson, contributing editor for American Vogue Sarah Mower, editor for Style.com Tim Blanks and Jo-Ann Furniss, president of Saks Fifth Avenue Marigay McKee and creative director of Colette Sarah Andelman.

Currently 483 designers, who have already shown and sold at least two men's or women's ready-to-wear collections from around the world have already applied for the chance to win, via the prize's online site that allows the competition to be global. The prize is a 300,000 euro grand, plus a year of mentoring from an internal team at LVMH.

After the ten finalists have been selected by the fashion expert panel, they must then present their collections to an elite jury, which consists of eight creative directors from LVMH fashion houses, including the likes of Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld, Nicolas Ghesquiére and Raf Simons. The jury will be joined by Delphine Arnault, Pierre-Yves Roussel chairman and CEO of LVMH Fashion Group and Jean-Paul Claverie advisor to Bernard Arnault and head of corporate philanthropy.

The winner is set to announced end of May.