Amanda Wakeley & Lucy Yeomans among judges for the GFW Gold Award

Julie Han-Yung Yeung, Northumbria University

Graduate Fashion Week is celebrating its 20th year anniversary and has announced the judging panel for its coveted Graduate Fashion Week Gold Award. The judges for this year’s award will be: Amanda Wakeley; creative director Norton & Sons Patrick Grant; E.Tautz; editor of Harpers Bazaar Lucy Yeomans, and design director of George Fiona Lambert.

The judges will review ten shortlisted collections made from 19 catwalk shows and put the students through a gruelling interview process, before selecting the winner of the £20,000 prize money. They will also select a Menswear and Womenswear award winner. To ensure that none of the event’s catwalk talent is missed, an elite industry panel of preliminary judges is in place to join the audience at every university show to highlight what they consider to be the best collection from each show. The judges include: GFW Trustee Professor Wendy Dagworthy; Paul Smith Head of Womenswear Sandra Hill; Mark Eley (Eley Kishimoto); and Head of design from George at Asda Sadie Robson. The Preliminary judges will also select from nominations for the BHM Visionary Knitwear Award and Zandra Rhodes Catwalk Textile Awards.