Graduate Fashion Week Awards 2026 Day One Winners
Graduate Fashion Week Awards 2026: The Day One Names Worth Remembering
Graduate Fashion Week Gold Award recipient Christopher Bailey won the inaugural honour in 1991, before going on to reshape Burberry and become one of British fashion’s most influential creative leaders. That is not trivia. That is the actual point of this week.
Graduate Fashion Week 2026 opened at the Truman Brewery on June 15 with thousands of students, around seventy institutions, and a room full of people who hire. The judges on those panels are not figures brought in for the occasion. They are working. They go back to their desks. And on day one, a handful of names made that commute feel relevant.
Some names travel further than others. These are the ones that opened the week.
Bath Spa University’s Pippa Bowerman did not win one award on opening day. She won two. The Bath Spa catwalk prize and the F&F x GFW Catwalk Award both went to the same graduate on the same day, a result that is, by any measure, unusual. Her coursemate Alice Hargreaves received a highly commended distinction on the same runway, which meant that Bath Spa, as a programme, had produced more than one story worth telling before the day had closed.
The F&F partnership is new to Graduate Fashion Week this year, built around a Digital Innovation Lab and a dedicated catwalk showcase. Pipa Bowerman is, therefore, its first-ever winner. What an inaugural prize comes to mean depends on what both parties do with it next.
Runners-up were Kirpa Kaur Baweja of the Jimmy Choo Academy and Naomi Lesbriel of Kingston University.
The Collective Catwalk
Nine institutions shared a single runway for the opening show: Anglia Ruskin, Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts, Coventry, LCCA, Leeds Arts, Northbrook, Southampton Solent, Derby, and Staffordshire. From that breadth of creative vision, three graduates were recognised. Lucy Esgate of Leeds Arts University, Tabitha Windle-Hartshorn of the University of Derby, and Rebecca Ogunribido of Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts each brought something distinct enough to be distinguished.
Norwich and the Textile Sweep
Both textile portfolio awards of the day went to Norwich University of the Arts. Sonia Abdul won Surface Textiles. Lola Powell won Constructed Textiles. Two prizes, one programme, one afternoon, and the kind of result that tends to prompt quiet questions about what a department has decided to prioritise, and how.
The Portfolio Rooms
The Accessories and Footwear Award went to Millie Watkins of Nottingham Trent University. Her work was assessed by buyers currently working at Oliver Bonas, Orla Kiely, COS, Barbour, and Marks & Spencer, people who will see new portfolios arrive in their inboxes for years to come and who now have her name in their memories before that happens.
Northumbria University’s Amber Lita won the Fashion Illustration Award, selected by a panel of seven practising illustrators and live event artists.
Kingston University claimed both the top prize and a highly commended in the Knit Portfolio Award. Eva Camper won; Jo Early was commended. First and second, same course, same year, whatever Kingston’s knitwear programme is doing right now, the results suggest it is worth paying attention to.
Two More Days
The Hilary Alexander Sustainable Trailblazer Award, the Fashion Portfolio Award, and the Pattern Cutting Award will be presented on 17 June. Those tend to produce the names that travel furthest after the week closes.
Day one gave the industry a shortlist. The graduates who won will spend the next few years making you forget there was ever a competition involved.
Graduate Fashion Week 2026: Day One Results
Catwalk
- Bath Spa Prize + F&F x GFW Catwalk Award – Pippa Bowerman, Bath Spa University
- Arts University Bournemouth – Mayo Kanamori (Meave Dean, Highly Commended)
- Nottingham Trent – Laura Perry (William Yang, Highly Commended)
- Collective Catwalk – Lucy Esgate, Leeds Arts University / Tabitha Windle-Hartshorn, University of Derby / Rebecca Ogunribido, Cambridge School of Visual & Performing Arts
Portfolio
- Accessories & Footwear – Millie Watkins, Nottingham Trent (Hannah Maria Ryan, University of Lancashire, Highly Commended)
- Fashion Illustration – Amber Lita, Northumbria University (Aaliyah Allan-Long, Leeds Arts, Highly Commended)
- Surface Textiles – Sonia Abdul, Norwich University of the Arts (Senuji de Silva, Northumbria, Highly Commended)
- Constructed Textiles – Lola Powell, Norwich University of the Arts (Zoë Anastasia, Bath Spa, Highly Commended)
- Dame Zandra Rhodes Printed Textiles – Abbie Jarvis, University of Lancashire (Sami Arslan, Bath Spa, Highly Commended)
- Knit Portfolio – Eva Camper, Kingston University (Jo Early, Kingston University, Highly Commended)
- Culture & Heritage, non-design – Reyah Shaikh, De Montfort University (Amina Jeng, Manchester Metropolitan, Highly Commended)
- Culture & Heritage, design – Safiya Shakirova, Cambridge School of Visual & Performing Arts (Hansel Abakan-Phillips, Bath Spa, Highly Commended)
Judges
- Elyse Blackshaw (Artist and Fashion Illustrator)
- Tracey Smith (Freelance Fashion and Event Illustrator)
- Louise Boughton (Fashion Illustrator, Live Event Artist & Educator)
- Olivia Tse (Live Event & Fashion Illustrator)
- Megan St Clair (Fashion and Lifestyle Illustrator)
- Annabel McLaughlin (Artist and Fashion Illustrator)
- Becky Jones (Senior Buyer of Jewellery and Hair Accessories at Oliver Bonas)
- Hannah Harrison (Senior Accessories Designer at Orla Kiely)
- Nanayaa Ntiri-Akuffo (Men’s & Women’s Footwear & Accessories Designer at COS)
- Kate Webb (Fashion and Accessories Designer at Katie Hillier)
- Greta McKean (Men’s Junior Footwear and Accessories Designer at Marks & Spencer)
- Sun Kit Fung (Design Lead at Groundtruth)
- Hayley Pitman (Accessories Designer at Barbour; previously worked for Marks & Spencer, Topshop, Ted Baker, and Jigsaw)
- Meerim Mamatova (Fashion Design)
- Dr Avis Ellis-Charles(CEO Avis Charles Associates. Strategic Fashion Consultant, Cultural & Heritage Researcher, Academic Consultant)
- Shereena Ghaffor (Stylist | Creative Direction | Talent Manage)
- Maxwell Agbede (Founder, Creative Director and Hatter, Maxim Collection)
- Daniel Peters (Founder & Managing Director)
- Cory Barrett (Creative Consultant and Cultural Advisor)
- Isabella Silvers (Freelance journalist and founder of Mixed Messages)
- Jun Chan (Creative Director at 1314 FAMILYSTYLE)
- Jess Lawrence (via Crumb)
- Sadie Clayton (Artist & Cultural Communicator)
- Toni-Blaze (Celebrity stylist and consultant; former EIC of Wonderland Magazine)
- Seun-Oluwaseun Ogunsola (Stylist, Creative & Fashion Editor)
- Joy Jukius (Creative Director)
- Helen Davies (Lead Design Manager, F&F Home)
- Phil Jones (Menswear Lead Design Manager)
- Elaine Leigh (Ladieswear Lead Design Manager)
- Clare Johnston (Textile Designer and Professor Emeritus of Textiles, Royal College of Art)
- Katie O’Malley (Print and Graphics Designer)
- Charlene Mullen (Textiles Designer and Director of Charlene Mullen Ltd.)
- Esmée E (Fashion and Textile Designer; founder of Esmée-E Sustainable Resort Wear)
- Odette Moncur (Creative Planning Manager at Liberty Fabrics)
- Laura Douglas (Founder of The Print Maker’s Guild)
- Ella Douglas (Fashion Designer and Founder of Ella Douglas)
- Noel Chapman (Design Consultant, Visiting Lecturer and Antique Textiles Dealer)
- Claire Lee (Designer)
- Ciara Jennings (Director of Ciara Jennings Textiles)
- Paul Vogel (Woven Textile Designer)
- Crimson DM Lily (Artist; Constructed Textiles Tutor at Goldsmiths Art School; Head of Sales and Digital for Phoebe English)
- Claire Sprules (Senior Knitwear Designer)
- Harriet Fletcher-Gilhuys (Textiles Researcher at Fashion Roundtable)
- Sadie Williams (Fashion and Textile Designer)
- Lara Nixon (Senior Knitwear Designer at New Look)
- Minnie Reed (Knitwear Designer at John Smedley Ltd)
- Hollie Maloney (Senior Knitwear Designer at Brora)
