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Sustainable designer scoops GQ prize

British fashion designer Priya Ahluwalia, known for her sustainable approach, has won this year’s British Fashion Council/GQ Designer Menswear Fund.

The prize is a one-year business mentorship, free legal services and a cash injection of £150,000.

Ahluwalia’s brand sees her weaving together her Indian-Nigerian heritage and London upbringing. She uses design techniques such as beading and dyeing to revive vintage clothes and fabric scraps.

Caroline Rush CBE, chief executive of the BFC, said: “Priya proved to be the strongest candidate showing incredible creativity along with a business strategy that embodies the future of British fashion, with environmental and socially positive practices at the core of the brand.”

Other finalists included Bethany Williams, Feng Chen Wang, Stefan Cooke, Bianca Saunders and Nicholas Daley. 

Ahluwalia said previously in an interview with GQ that she doesn’t like being labelled as a sustainable designer: “I’m not an environmentalist and I’m still learning, just trying to do the best I can. We just try to work with materials that are pre-existing, dead stock or vintage, and just try and create really interesting design details and quirks. Sustainability just naturally happened.”

Previous recipients of the fund are Craig Green, Christopher Shannon, A-Cold-Wall*’s Samuel Ross (who also uses sustainable materials) and E. Tautz (around 50% of his AW20 collection was made from recycled fabrics).

Ahluwalia won the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design from the Countess of Wessex in February earlier this year. She also came out on top in the H&M Design Awards 2019 and joined forces with Adidas at Paris Fashion Week for AW19.