1 Granary Launches Design Awards to Honor Entire Fashion Teams and Advocate for Industry Change
1 Granary is launching the Design awards to credit the entire teams behind fashion collections, not just top figures, featuring 20 categories with winners chosen by about 1,000 designers and brand/studio staff. For each winner, 1 Granary will publish the full team list from junior designer to creative director to acknowledge the collaborative work behind collections.
The Design awards are overseen by 1 Granary, a platform with around 19,000 Substack subscribers and a large Instagram following of 314,000. Originating in 2012 as a student magazine founded by Olya Kuryshchuk at Central Saint Martins, 1 Granary now advocates for behind-the-scenes workers across 50 universities.
Following recent Fashion Awards where Jonathan Anderson was named Designer of the Year, Anok Yai Model of the Year, and Delphine Arnault received special recognition for supporting new talent via the LVMH prize, 1 Granary aims to offer a solution-oriented, non-shaming approach that highlights structural issues in fashion rather than singling out individuals or brands. This method seeks to foster progress in the industry.
The platform has influenced key debates about issues such as AI's impact on stylists, the collapse of Ssense, and brands owed money by Ssense. Dal Chodha of Central Saint Martins describes 1 Granary as an advocate for those behind the scenes, likening its influence to a union and emphasizing its crucial role in rethinking fashion’s future.
Industry figures acknowledge that 1 Granary’s visibility can unsettle traditional power players, but its primary aim remains supporting design teams rather than focusing on public-facing stars.
