When we set out to recruit some of the top student design talent to submit their visions of what denim will look like in 2020, there’s no way we expected the amount of responses that came flowing in. By the time submissions closed, we received over 500 submissions from 27 countries and 50 nationalities. These talented student designers completely blew us away, creating a highly competitive field in this first step of our decision process.
With much difficulty, we have narrowed the contestants down to 20 designers, just 4% of the applicant pool. We’re sending huge congratulations to our twenty shortlisted designers, a select few of who will join us this summer for a design internship at Levi’s® HQ in San Francisco. From here, we will now take your work into a second round of judging with the Levi’s® Design Team. We’ll study all of your work in detail and narrow the list down to eight finalists, who will then be interviewed for the internship. Stay tuned for the finalist announcement coming soon!
For those who did not make it through to the next round, some wise words of advice from Jonathan Cheung, Levi’s® SVP of global design:
“Let me leave you with a piece of advice that I wish I could have given myself when I was a student, which is to ‘trust yourself’. You have already made a brave decision to follow your heart into fashion design. Stay curious. Swim out into the deep water. It’s OK to be a little bit afraid, but know that you can do a lot more than you think. Take on life with courage, persistence and grab hold of every experience you can. Trust your instincts, you have the world in front of you and there will be times when you’ll ask yourself which way to turn. At those points, follow your heart.”
And now for the shortlist! Drum roll please…
20 Designers Shortlisted for Levi’s® x Arts Thread Design Challenge
February 23, 2016
