By my watch it was 2:49 pm at the Louis Vuitton Fondation in Paris when Cate Blanchett delivered the news: “I know I speak for everyone in wishing the winner a long and fulfilling career. So, the 2022 LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designer goes to… SS Daley!” The audience whooped as Steven Stokey Daley, 25, stepped up onto the stage in his voluminous khaki collection trench coat to accept the fancy golden award. As with everything else over the last 48 hours spent here prepping for this moment – sleep-time excepted – Daley delivered his speech with aplomb. “This is like an Oscar, so thanks Cate! I genuinely didn’t expect to win, so thanks to everyone who supported me.” In a brief speech (as brief as the then-unknown winner had been asked to deliver during rehearsals the day before) he name-checked Vogue’s Sarah Mower and Harry Lambert, then added, raising a second laugh: “and my boyfriend, who didn’t have a choice.”
Only 90 minutes later that crowd had all but evaporated. Certainly the year’s roster of LVMH Prize judges, including artistic directors Nigo (Kenzo), Silvia Venturini Fendi, Kim Jones (Dior Men and Fendi), Nicolas Ghesquière (Louis Vuitton), Jonathan Anderson (Loewe), Maria Grazia Chiuri (Christian Dior), and Stella McCartney CBE were scattered to the winds. The only evidence of 2:49 pm’s critical mass were a few lurkers and laptop-hunched reporters. Backstage, in the small area where he and his fellow seven LVMH Prize finalists had spent the last two days in close and intense creative proximity – a proximity that you would think would breed competition but turned out not to – Stokey Daley at last finished his final victory interview on Zoom. Alongside Leo Meredith, that beaming boyfriend without a choice, Daley said: “I think this whole experience is just very surreal. And it’s only just starting to sink in now, actually. The last few hours have been a bit of a blur, but overall? This has been life-changing.”
The truth is that every one of today’s finalists would have made a worthy winner of the 9th edition of the LVMH Prize, which as well as that fancy award comes with €300,000 in cash and the priceless bonus of a year’s worth of mentoring from LVMH. ERL’s Eli Russell Linnetz and Winnie New York’s Idris Balogun, who together shared this year’s Karl Lagerfeld Award (and each took away €150,000), were clearly candidates. Speaking before the award was given judge Maria Grazia Chiuri name-checked the Londoner Idiwe Tokyo James as someone who had impressed her, while fellow judge Sidney Toledano, the Chairman and CEO of LVMH Fashion Group, cited Hiroshima-born Ryunosuke Okazaki of Ryunosukeokazaki as another strong prospect. He added: “With each of the candidates frankly it was worth talking with them, even pretty small companies, just to know how the baby still in the egg, just out of the egg is feeling… because for us it gives signals.” Dubliner Róisín Pierce, New Jersey-dwelling Ashlyn, and the Londoners KNWLS – whose Alexandre Arsenault said he and co-founder Charlotte Knowles were kicking themselves for rushing their jury presentation out of nerves – were all highly accomplished too.
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It was little wonder that Knowles and Arsenault had been on a knife edge. To pitch for victory, each finalist was given precisely 10 minutes in front of the jury, placed on a special off-white star on the freshly installed cream carpet, to explain their collection and answer questions. Speaking afterwards the Prize’s founder Delphine Arnault said: “You have to stand in front of the artistic directors who are the most important today: people that [the finalists] have been looking up to for a long time. So it must be very intimidating for them – but sometimes this is part of the job, to express yourself really well and handle a lot of stress.” She added: “And Stella was really nice [to them] – she said: “don’t worry, I’m scared of some of the people here myself!”’ Stella was joking (or at least half-joking), but through his translator another juror, first-time attendee Nigo, added: “I was actually pretty nervous before I turned up, but when I saw Kim and Silvia I felt better because they are old friends.” Nigo added that what had impressed him about Daley’s winning entry was that: “in only two years he has built a complete vision of his brand – and done it with only two guys working on it. That made me feel he has real potential.”
Jonathan Anderson chimed in: “I think this was the second year in a row that everyone agreed [about the winner] which is always good. And I think a lot this year was actually about emotional stories: why do we make clothing? It was more about the narrative, I think this season. More personal, I think.”
Stokey Daley’s personal story and point of view – specifically English and rooted in class and otherness – is powerfully defined. But one other thing that stood apart was his calmness. Earlier, before the crowds arrived, he returned from his 10 minute judging session, hugged Leo and his models, and said: “I anticipated a lot of the questions, to be honest – how much does it cost, where was it made – so I was ready for that. I think the most surprising thing was how personable and nice they all were.”
Shortly after she handed Daley that fancy award, Cate Blanchett said: “I wasn’t part of the judging process, I just joined at the last minute. Which is interesting because you can make decisions based on your own personal taste. But it’s an entirely different process when you understand as a juror you have someone’s career and development at stake… Because everyone can have an amazing moment and there are so many breakouts, but can they sustain the brutality of the fashion industry?”
Alongside her was Nicolas Ghesquière, the only person apart from Delphine Arnault to have served as a judge since 2014’s first edition. He said: “This was an extremely charming year. We were charmed by every story. For instance Winnie, to come from working for a big house [Tom Ford] to switch his career, or Róisín Pierce from Ireland’s special craftsmanship… so it was not at all easy to say this is better than the other. But it is about coherence: when you design a collection it has to be quite complete. And this is what we wanted to celebrate today. But it was very hard, to be honest.”
Hard for the jurors, and even harder for those who are judged: as the LVMH Prize prepares to reboot for its 10th year it has become one of the most meaningful accolades in contemporary fashion. And while congratulations to Steven Stokey Daley are due, none of today’s finalists should be counted as losers. As Delphine Arnault said of the process they all faced today: “I would not like to do it myself!”
Editor
Luke LeitchCredit
Lead Image: @lvmhprize via Instagram