FashionFame

Winning the Swiss Textiles Award has always been at the top of a young designer’s wish list. And these days, when even established houses are hurting, this 100,000 euro prize is sure to come in extra handy. And there’s no doubt that Alexander Wang, this year’s winner of Swiss Textiles Award got that strong creativity with fabrics, that could beat out a talented field including Peter Pilotto, Ohne Titel, Erdem, Alexis Mabille, and Thakoon.

The show wasn’t event’s sole high point. But to mark award’s 10th anniversary, Swiss Textiles assembled previous years’ winners, an all-star cast including Raf Simons, Haider Ackermann, and Marios Schwab for a panel discussion. Fashion-industry headhunter Mathias Ohrel and author Dana Thomas were also included in the judge panel.

Wang’s most recent show, the Spring 2010 Collection presented at New York Fashion Week, was a highly innovative combination of athletic actively sportswear with nighttime cool. From corset sweatshirt tops, linebacker shoulders on gray, or perforated rugby stripe looks morphed into tunics and raincoats composed as capes it was all about reinventing athletic codes into cool and contemporary fashion.

The prize of 100,000 euros, or $147,000, is not paid out in cash, but instead 10,000 euros is allocated to buy Swiss fabric, with the remainder used to produce and market upcoming collections by Wang. Wang’s other five finalists did not go away bare handed, but instead they were given a fabric voucher worth 4,000 euros, or $5,880.

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