Vogue designer Gavin Douglas will adjudicate a CFW Young Designer Award for 2011 at Caribbean Fashionweek in June. Himself the winner of Britain’s Prince’s Trust Young Designer Award, Europe’s Fashion Fringe Award, The Avant garde Designer of the Year Award, as well as the Smirnoff Originator Award and the CFW Master Designer designation, Douglas has been a key young talent on the runways of Paris, London and Milan in recent years. Interestingly, he first showed a collection at Caribbean Fashionweek in the mid 2000s and continues to be inspired by the Caribbean. He has decided to give back to the region through the CFW Young Designer project, selecting a fresh new talent every year for mentorship and development. The award is open to designers across the wider Caribbean.

Pulse is pleased to facilitate this initiative at CFW and believes it has the potential to play a key role in talent discovery and development. Young designers between the ages of 18 and 28 years are encouraged to submit sketches of their designs to info@pulsecaribbean.com. Designers should have been designing for 5 years or less and should be able to produce 2 to 3 looks from their sketches. The competition is now open and the deadline for submission of sketches is June 3, 2011.

Says Douglas: “The Caribbean is an exciting new market for many of the world’s major brands and it is providing new opportunities for young creative design talent. It is now time to nurture this talent, help it to flourish and bring it to the forefront of the international fashion design market.” The CFW Young Designer award is a joint project of Pulse and Gavin Douglas.

The winner will be the strongest designer, the one with the most potential plus the sustainability to survive within the fashion industry. That person will have determination, passion, self belief, and a strong aesthetic that will create clothes of extraordinary originality, but with a realistic practical intelligence behind them. The top 3 contestants will get the opportunity to show short collections at CFW 2011.

Pulse is the region’s leader in the fashion and beauty industry and the organiser of Caribbean Fashionweek, the largest and most far reaching fashion event in the world, focused on the Caribbean. Gavin Douglas is an elite women’s wear fashion label that within a short period of time has achieved incredible success and recognition. Douglas’ ultra chic designs have been worn by “A” list celebrities and have been regularly seen on the pages fo the world’s most influential fashion and lifestyle publications including Harpers Bazaar, tattler and Vogue.