International Fashion Award Goes to Mayako Kano

New Zealander Mayako Kano, 32, has been named winner of the International Talent Support (ITS) Fashion Award claiming a 10,000 Euro prize with “one of the more elegant provocations” of the competition, according to CNN.

This year’s event, held in Trieste, Italy marked the 15th anniversary of International Talent Support – an annual contest to find the fashion world’s next big thing and foster creativity.

The competition’s theme this year was Utopia.

Across fashion, jewellery, artwork and accessories categories, the finalists presented a broad range of pieces, projects and processes, some more conceptual than others.

From footwear based on food to gender-fluid jewellery to futuristic sensory technology concepts, the creativity on show was certainly impressive.

Kano’s pieces, in a collection entitled “Reverse Fade”, incorporated 1930s-40s cutting techniques with modern layering and fabrics.

Reverse Fade was all about taking apart existing clothes and “collaging” them back together with hand embroidery and trapunto quilting, inspired by “handmade things from previous eras that have been stored between pieces of tissue paper, archived or coated in gloss,” Kano told W magazine.

Founder Barbara Franchin told Vogue the candidate selection was a herculean task: “We collected 935 portfolios from 200 fashion and design schools in 53 nations. Then we reduced the list to 11 finalists.”

Kano is a graduate of Parsons School of Design and currently works for Jason Wu in New York as a collections design coordinator.

Original article by Angelica Pursley, CNN, July 22, 2016.