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Dorchester Collection Fashion Prize
London, Los Angeles, Milan, Paris and New York - in every major fashion capital there is a Dorchester Collection hotel and, by launching the Dorchester Collection Fashion Prize, the Dorchester Collection becomes the first luxury hotel group to award a fashion honour.
The location of the inaugural Dorchester Collection Fashion Prize is London, where over the course of 2010, A panel of judges will award one exceptionally gifted designer, of ready-to-wear or premium accessories, with £25,000, to enable them to create their next collection. The winning designer will also receive accommodation and an event, tailored to their specific needs, at the Dorchester Collection hotel of their choice.
The judges will ultimately reward an exceptional talent who best demonstrates unique design flair, a capability for future critical distinction and commercial success. The work of the Dorchester Fashion Prize winner must also evoke the spirit of the Dorchester Collection’s iconic hotels and, therefore, project a sense of individuality, luxury, style and craftsmanship.
Fashion’s most dynamic forces have long considered the Dorchester Collection hotels their preferred outposts. The Dorchester, for example, has been considered a home away from home for a legion of British style icons including Lady Diana Cooper, Elizabeth Taylor, Kate Moss and Tom Ford. At Le Meurice, Coco Chanel hosted elegant dinner parties during her 1930s heyday and Christian Dior considered the Hôtel Plaza Athénée his “second home.” Dior, a noted gourmand, frequently lunched at the majestic hotel and had his groundbreaking couture collections photographed at Hôtel Plaza Athénée, too. And while the penthouse atop the New York Palace Hotel is the residence of Serena van der Woodsen, the modish lead character portrayed by Blake Lively on the runaway hit TV series Gossip Girl, the “world of fashion” - that is, Jean Paul Gaultier, Christian Lacroix, Stella McCartney and Laudomia Pucci, among others - has always checked in to Milan’s Hotel Principe di Savoia. Irene Dunne and Loretta Young - Golden Age Hollywood’s best dressed actresses - once owned the Beverly Hills Hotel and the stunning “pink palace” along with the plush Hotel Bel-Air, which reopens in 2011, are the hotels where the film industry’s finest traditionally decamp to prepare for the world’s most watched fashion show - the Oscars.
And so, aside from the funds the Dorchester Collection Fashion Prize will endow, granting a designer an event at one of its legendary hotels is a uniquely substantial benefit.