It’s not every day that an edition of Vogue launches its own fashion fund. Yet today Kerstin Weng, head of editorial content for Vogue Germany, took to the floor of the James Simon Galerie in Berlin to announce the seven inaugural finalists of this first year of the FCG/Vogue Fashion Fund. They would be: Kasia Kucharska, Lou de Betoly, Lueder, Namilia, Richert Bell, SF10G, and Sia Arnika. Congratulations to each and every one of them. They’re an impressively talented group of designers, and the winner, who receives a prize of 25,000 euros, will be announced at Vogue Germany’s Forces of Fashion event on September 23 in Munich.
The fund has been launched in conjunction with the Fashion Council Germany (FCG), much as the CFDA works with American Vogue, or the British Fashion Council with Vogue UK. And it has done so with the blessing of Michael Biel, Secretary of State for the city of Berlin, who has lent his impressive and weighty support. In other words: It all aids and abets the idea that by pulling together, you can support the next generation of talents. And sometimes—well, usually, all the time, in fact—there’s an urgency to that.