AMBUSH® and KOZABURO, both Japanese brands, were selected as six finalists for the LVMH Prize, a gateway for young fashion designers that received over 1,200 applications from 90 countries around the world. Verbal, an MC/DJ who collaborates with designer YOON on the design of AMBUSH®, expressed his surprise, saying, "Wow, really, we! We never dreamed we'd make it to the finals, it's just an utterly unbelievable feeling." "Someone who came to our exhibition encouraged us to apply, so we casually packed up the paperwork and applied, and we made it to the finals! Really, we?" he exclaimed in disbelief. The two designers of AMBUSH®, who started out with jewelry in 2008 and are largely self-taught, have expanded their collections to include clothing, while the other Japanese finalist, Akasaka KOZABURO, has a completely different background. Akasaka studied at Central Saint Martins in the UK and Parsons School of Design in the US before working at the Maison Thom Browne. While their profiles differ, representing street and mainstream fashion, Akasaka, whose designs are influenced by 1990s Tokyo street fashion and music subculture, and AMBUSH®, whose brand grew out of the club movement, have been selected for this year's awards, symbolizing the recent fashion scene, which has even coined the term "luxury street." VERBAL & YOON were named to Business of Fashion's "500 People Changing the Fashion World" for two consecutive years, in 2015 and 2016. These two brands follow in the footsteps of FACETASM, the first Japanese brand to be a finalist in the previous awards. Teppei Fujita of SULVAM, who showed as a guest designer at Pitti Uomo in January of this year, was also selected as a semi-finalist. In Europe, where "diversity" is being touted, diversity of backgrounds, including that of designers like him, who steadily honed his skills on the job as a pattern maker for Yohji Yamamoto, is also poised to become an important factor in the future luxury market.
The contest was founded in 2013. The judges include designers associated with LVMH, such as Karl Lagerfeld, Nicolas Ghesquiere, Pheobe Philo, Riccardo Tisci, JW Anderson, and Marc Jacobs. The winner will receive 300,000 euros and support from LVMH, and in 2015 finalists included Virgil Abloh of Off-White (c/o Virgil Abloh), Demna Gvasalia of Vetements, and Grand Prize winner Marques'Almeida, so it goes without saying that they are already leading the current luxury scene with such force that they can hardly be called newcomers.
The Grand Prize winner will be announced at the awards ceremony to be held at the Fondation Louis Vuitton on June 17th.
Text: Noda Tatsuya
