Helen Greensmith Wins First Como-Texprint Competition.

July 21, 2008

The standard of the entries for the first COMO-TEXPRINT COMPETITION were extremely high and although the judges unanimously agreed upon Helen Greensmith’s entry from Gray’s School of Art as the Gold Award winner, decisions on the Silver and Bronze awards were much more difficult - they fell between the Royal College of Art, Cleveland College of Art & Design, Birmingham City University, Chelsea College of Art & Design and Loughborough University.

Finally the judges chose Daisy Butler from Chelsea College of Art & Design for Silver and Alex Brady from Loughborough University for Bronze.

The COMO-TEXPRINT COMPETITION launches a new collaboration between TEXPRINT and The Unione Industriali di Como who are taking a new active role within the world’s emerging textile design community to create an international network for the development of creativity and style. This work has evolved into the project ComOn for which they have partnered with TEXPRINT a number of international networks that aim to link new textile designers to industry.

Helen Greensmith and her winning entry the judges, Sarah Mower, Ian Griffiths, Creative Director, Max Mara and Louise Trotter, Creative Director, Jigsaw commented:

“Helen’s entry for Gray’s School of Art immediately stood out as our winner; it was just so exuberant and young with great colours and a good composition on the head with the very best co-ordinates. Chelsea’s entry won silver for its fantastically witty combination of all of Chelsea’s most obvious icons - the football club, the flower show and of course the pensioners! For Bronze the final choice was Loughborough because they had the very best graphics and the design flowed on the head, the co-ordinating prints were also very interesting.”

“It was really exciting to see students work so imaginatively on a headscarf project - just at the moment when scarves are so hot! We were all drawn to the ones who used colour in a vibrant way and who had fully exploited the fashion functionality of the piece. The winning design got that all lined up brilliantly. It’s never just about the print, but how good it is to wear…” - Sarah Mower,Contributing Editor American Vogue.

The Winning colleges will receive £750 for the Gold Award, £500 for the Silver and £250 for the Bronze. In addition the 3 prize winners together with a further 3 runners up will be invited along with 18 other young designers from all over Europe to participate in the special “Creative Week” ComOn. The three runners up are Mio Yamamoto from the Royal College of Art, Claire Salway from Cleveland College of Art & Design and Ian Kilbourne from Birmingham City University. In total 18 Fashion and Design colleges took part in the nationwide competition.

During the week the group will meet internationally renowned trend guru Li Edelkoort and leading fashion house Etro. They will also have the opportunity to visit some of the most significant and acclaimed fashion textile companies in Como - Canepa, Clerici Tessuto, Mantero and Ratti. The object of this week is to offer the winners a unique experience to help develop their own individual creative and personal knowledge of the vibrant textile community that exists in Como.

“The COMO-TEXPRINT 2008 COMPETITION award will be the beginning of a long-term relationship between the Como Textile Industry and the UK’s Fashion & Textile Design schools. We hope in this way to help the designers of the future to find the right way to approach the amazing world of fashion textiles”

Paolo Noseda of Tesso and representative of ComOn Committee The project brief was for each Art College to submit a 90cm x 90cm silk scarf, which celebrates the individual Art School and its location. The silk scarf was to include the COMO TEXPRINT 2008 COMPETITION logo to link it with the event. Colleges were also asked to design co-ordinating dress prints.

Como represents 80% of European silk weaving and 90% of European exports of silk fabrics, it’s success is built on its high fashion input and quality. There are 700 companies who are members of the Como Industrial Federation, of whom 250 are in textiles.

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Written by Andy Bowden

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