Ten creative minds
FACE profiles ten Black Excellence Prize shortlisted creatives.
Compiled by Sabah Rehman
The Black Excellence Prize has been created through collaboration between FACE members and the Graduate Fashion Foundation with the objective of amplifying Black and Brown creativity. Identifying and celebrating the unique contributions that Black and Brown creative’s bring to society through shaping fashion, style and culture, we are thrilled to profile tomorrow’s talent right here.
Contestants were from numerous further education institutions able to self nominate for this prize. Judges consisting of NewGen Prize-winning and LVMH Award Shortlisted Designer Bianca Saunders, Creative Director and stylist Karen Binns and Designer, educator and FACE Council member Benita Odogwu-Atkinson were delighted with the standard.
This is an ongoing portfolio and we urge all those featured to get in touch with their instagram link for us to add.
For now, click on the links for further info and broader examples of their creativity. As you know…through the creation of The Black Excellence Awards, FACE hopes to inspire young Black and Brown creative’s whilst simultaneously instigating the vital education of white creative’s, to directly challenge tendency towards adoption and appropriation of Black and Brown narratives.
Further reading…
Dayna Tohidi, Central Saint Martins
Plasteris an online magazine for frustrated 16-18-year-olds who aspire to have a career in the fashion industry but aren't getting the information they need most. Tired of being patronised, they go to Plaster for serious and authentic fashion journalism. Unconventional for a magazine, Plaster peels away the industry's glamorous facade to give its audience a balanced insider perspective they can trust.
Before I started my Bachelor's degree in fashion journalism at Central Saint Martins, I knew very little about the plethora of job opportunities and specialisms in the fashion industry. The feedback from my focus groups with 16-18-year-old teenagers studying art and design subjects at private and state schools shows that I wasn't alone. This planted the seed for Plaster's"Careers 101"series, which aims to demystify prestigious and ambiguous jobs in the industry. InIssue One, we meet ELLE UK's deputy chief sub-editor, Olivia McCrea-Hedley, PINKO's sustainability design director, Patrick McDowell, and LATEX magazine's founder and editor-in-chief, MajoMundacaZagal.
Statement and further info here:
Instagram: @plaster.mag
Tik tok: plaster.mag
Demi-Leigh Holmes, Sheffield Hallam University
This project ‘Giving A Voice to the Voiceless’ is all about sharing the voices and perspectives from people of colour and creating an awareness of lived experiences. Through expressing the beauty of black culture and creativity through our similar realities, I will be sharing the sense of community among people of colour but also inviting white individuals to join and celebrate this movement.
Being a person of colour myself I have become frustrated with seeing blackness misrepresented and tokenised in front of the camera, and a worrying lack of blackness behind it. This project has been created as a means of demonstrating the full potential that comes when black individuals are given a platform and will share our real voices which the mainstream media often fails to do. My aim is to try and break down misinterpretations and stereotypes of black individuals by giving honest and genuine accounts to show society who black people really are despite what the media shows.
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Fanta Shirif, De Montfort University
For my final collection I have researched the concept of being Afropean and looked closely at my family’s journey in finding settlement in Europe as Africans. Born in the Netherlands and having moved around Europe, my family and I have always struggled in being accepted and finding a real sense of home and community. I began to dissect my dad’s experience and I have learnt that his interest in football aided him significantly in finding a sense of belonging. No matter where in the world he was, whether he could speak the language or not, he could always find a relationship with people and places through the sport.
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Farhad Ali, University of Salford
For my final collection I was inspired by finding the beauty in the everyday, and unsuspecting. Looking at Duchamp, I have explored what it means to consider something as ‘Art’ and seeking to distort our perception of the body and fashion.
My message is to look beyond the expected and you’ll discover something beautiful within that. By using materials not usually seen in fashion, we can create something truly unique.
The initial idea was for me to be inspired by a collection to do with my heritage, however I found it hard to connect with Bangladesh. From the lack of knowledge and understanding i had with my mother country. But there were a few things that I took forward into my collection. By the way they use handcraft and a lot of up-cycled material in the village that my parents come from.
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Giorgia Bovone, Birmingham City University
The world today is constantly changing likewise its most intrusive inhabitants: humans. The present society is full of nuances and it is hard to describe it, but it is part of the human nature attempting to give a definition to a diversified group of people.
One of the ways to do this is to associate a cultural identity with a population. However, this process becomes more complicated and the definition becomes more and more changeable, as in the last period, referring in particular to the European population, a strong migration flow has created an increasingly multicultural and multiethnic society. The stratification of different and constantly changing cultural influences creates a difficulty in defining a distinct cultural identity. A perfect example describing this phenomenon is the difficulty in constructing a defined cultural identity for second-generation immigrants.
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Joy Julius, Kingston School of Art
My collection is about fighting for the people. After the “END SARS PROTESTS” against police brutality that took place in Nigeria last year, I decided that I wanted to create a collection in response to that. I decided to merge the traditional attire shapes with military and utility details and adhere a tie dye traditional technique to create a new kind of design for a new kind of movement. A movement inspired by the black panther movement.
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Instagram: @joyjulius_
Rachel De Souza, The University of Huddersfield
My collection US is a concept of “unity without uniformity and diversity without division” (Jim,2019), that shifts focus from unity based on a mere tolerance of physical, cultural, lin guistic, social, religious, political, ideological, and psychological differences towards a more complex unity based on an understanding that differences enrich human interactions.
As the world becomes more interconnected, it is evident that people from all parts of life need to work together. It is unfortunate that till this day, the world isn’t too shy to show the division that our diversity can cause us. As a young girl, I’ve never felt any different to anyone that looked different to me or was of a different ethnic group or culture. However, as I got older, being forced to realise my differences immediately disconnected me from other ethnic and religious groups etc. I believe it is important as a human that, we acknowledge and embrace our differences rather than, pointing them out and discriminating which we know creates division in our society.
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Ruby Kiwinda, University of Brighton
For my final year project, I have written and directed a short film called VUMILIA, a Swahili word meaning to endure. The name brings together my Kenyan heritage and a comment within the film that is to achieve many traditional African hairstyles one must endure the pain and time that it takes.
Through specialising in art direction, production design and directing I aimed to create a film that challenges the often negative ideas of afro-textured hair and portrays afro hair care, styling and culture in a positive and educational way. The concept was born from my research and relationship with my culture and its historic hairstyles. I believe that traditional African hair care and styling does not receive the acknowledgement that it deserves in fashion and film.
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Tiani Etheridge, Coventry University
My collection, 'Gaze' is inspired by the intersectional feminist movement.
I used a mixture of abstract portraiture, print design, and textiles manipulation to reflect the artwork I had found during my research into the movement. The use of block colours in prints, collages, large scale quilts and tapestries. It made me think about how you can use colour and texture to draw in interest and promote a message.
The message of my collection is that your clothes reflect who you are; interests and values, a wearable statement. The garments focus on the concept of recapturing the female gaze; designing for visual impact and joy.
My initial ideas were inspired by a visit to the “Power to the People” exhibition in Birmingham. The Power to the People exhibition displayed over four centuries of work. The piece that most influenced me was the “Forward Birmingham” banner by Sandi Kiehlman. It featured a female figure holding a flaming torch over the city skyline.
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Yiyang Chen, University of Edinburgh
Fashion records the history and progress of humanity. My collection focuses on war and humanity. There is a complicated and close relationship between war and human. Although war brings suffering to humanity, it can contribute to the technological, political, economic and cultural development of humankind.
The collection calls for people to learn about history, about human beings and about themselves. this collection also warns people to cherish peace and stay away from war. I will take the history of air warfare as a starting point for my investigation into the life and clothing of the warriors. Then, from the perspective of humanity, I will focus on the changes that have taken place in the human race, driven by war and technology.
My collection is designed for autumn and winter.
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