The late Dame Vivienne Westwood is one of the global fashion industry’s inspirational and radical design powerhouses. To commemorate Dame Westwood and her influence on decades of fashion students, Graduate Fashion Week has renamed the annual GFW Ethical Award to ‘The Vivienne Westwood Ethical Award’.
At this year’s Graduate Fashion Week, CSVPA were thrilled to have 4 students announced as winners of this award – Fabia Longjohn and Hannah Blunt from the BA (Hons) Fashion Branding & Creative Communications programme and Charlotte Lamb and Sophie Wheeler, from the BA (Hons) Fashion Design programme.
The award is a competition open to all students and Graduate Fashion Week member universities with projects rooted in ethics or sustainability. These students’ projects were based on the most beautiful take on reusable materials, like embroidered fabrics sent to grandmothers decades ago.
Dame Westwood, dubbed ‘the Queen of British Fashion’, died aged 81 in December 2022. Making her name with controversial punk and new wave styles in the 1970s, Vivienne was also known as a staunch activist and brought causes she cared about, like climate change, to the catwalk.
“Buy less, choose well, make it last. If people bought only beautiful clothes, that would be Climate Revolution. Let us cultivate talent.” – Dame Vivienne Westwood.
In this vain, it is no surprise that the Graduate Fashion Foundation, who had Westwood as one of their ‘lifetime patrons’, have renamed their most prolific sustainability award after her and at CSVPA, we are thrilled that so many of our students have been recognized with this fantastic award.
