Loro Piana names Knit Design Award winners

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jun 23, 2022

Loro Piana has announced the winners of the sixth edition of its international Knit Design Award competition. The contest is dedicated to talented students” who give their own creative interpretation of yarns “that represent the excellence” of the house. 

It sees a number of prestigious design schools taking part and the theme of the 2022 edition was Rediscovery. The winners were students Po-Chieh Chiu and Shanon Poupard from the Institut Français de la Mode, Paris.

As well as the award, they receive an employment contract with the company (the first time in the prize’s history that it has offered this). They will also have the opportunity to create the finished garment in the firm’s knitwear workshop. And the project will be shown during Pitti Filati later this month.

Also taking part were students from North Carolina State University, Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University, the Politecnico di Milano, Tel Aviv’s Shenkar College and Tokyo’s Bunka Fashion College.

They were asked to reinterpret the brand’s Traveller Jacket and “create a personal, knitwear version, delving into tradition and future, tailoring and experimentation”. 

The final took place this week during a special event at the firm’s new Milan HQ. The judges included the company’s CEO Damien Bertrand, Sara Sozzani Maino of Vogue Italia, founder of Stylenotcom Beka Gvishiani, knitwear designer Chet Lo, and Letizia Schätzinger who’s a TikToker and content creator.