Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Fashion & Design and Fashion & Culture 2026 ($50,000 prize) – YOA

Deadline: June 9, 2025

Applications are open for the Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Fashion & Design and Fashion & Culture 2026. This prestigious award acknowledges the outstanding early-profession achievements of younger, immigrant style professionals who’re reshaping the world of style by means of progressive design, cultural affect, and boundary-pushing creativity.

Categories

Fashion & Design:

• Designers – together with however not unique to womenswear, menswear, nonbinary clothes, textile design (together with print, embellishment, knitwear, authentic cloth making for style), and equipment together with footwear, luggage, jewellery, and different artifacts referring to the tradition of style.
• Environmental and Technology Designers – environmental designers, sustainability specialists, eco-aware creators, and professionals designing wearable applied sciences.
• Material Innovation – professionals who develop new materials and progressive textile applied sciences corresponding to sensible textiles, eco-pleasant materials, and new dyeing/floor application strategies for varied sectors together with however not unique to Uniforms, Athletics, Space, Medical, and Innovative Workwear.
• Makeup Artists / Hair Stylists – extremely expert artists and stylists who’ve achieved business recognition for their work or experimental artists that push the breadth of supplies used to each problem and talk perceived magnificence beliefs by means of the artwork and design of make-up or hair.

Fashion & Culture:

• Writers and Researchers – together with educational (historic, theoretical, and anthropological), journalistic, essential, and editorial.
• Curators and Museum Professionals – together with exhibitions, shows, and shows by means of actual and/or digital environments. It may embody preservation and conservation.
• Stylists – together with editorials, promoting campaigns, and style shows
• Image Makers – together with style pictures, movie, animation, illustration, and work in style tech.

Prizes

• Unrestricted money prize of $50,000 is awarded to every prizewinner.
• Reflect on how your expertise as an immigrant has formed your success.
• Receive a useful endorsement from leaders in your subject.
• Receive a complete public relations marketing campaign to advertise you and your work.

Eligibility

Applicants should:

• Have been born outdoors the United States of America to non-American dad and mom;
• Not be greater than 38 years outdated as of December 31, 2025 (born on or after January 1, 1987), Exceptions might be made for candidates who have been born on January 1, 1985, to December 31, 1986, and who skilled profession interruptions as a consequence of caregiving, medical, army, or parental go away;
• Have lived in the United States for a minimum of 4 years (or immigrated to the United States on or earlier than December 31, 2021);
• Be one of many following: a naturalized citizen or a everlasting resident of the United States; a H-1B or O-1 visa holder with a sound visa stamp; a H-4 visa holder with a sound EAD card; a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) reduction; an asylee or an asylum seeker who has utilized for asylum and has a sound EAD card. Please word that different kinds of visas together with TN, F-1, J-1 visa holders are usually not eligible for the prize. Applicants could also be required to submit a scanned copy of a sound immigration doc if their application progresses in the assessment course of. The workers on the Vilcek Foundation will attain out with directions on the acceptable time;
• Have a minimum of 5 years {of professional} expertise in fields associated to Fashion & Design or Fashion & Culture;
• Not be enrolled as a full-time scholar (Exceptions could apply for some doctoral college students who will full their program this yr);
• Have accomplished a minimum of 3 skilled, carried out solo or collective tasks; 
• Intend to pursue a profession in the United States;
• Not be a previous recipient of the Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in any class.

Application

You might be required to:

• Register for the Vilcek Foundation Prize Portal (You will obtain an e mail prompting you to create your consumer profile. Check your spam folder if you don’t obtain it.)
• Complete your consumer profile
• Complete all application questions and present the next:
  • Answer essay questions.
  • Current CV: present a public URL hyperlink (e.g., Dropbox, Google Drive) to a letterhead-sized PDF, or a hyperlink to a viewable PDF model of your present CV.
  • Work samples/tasks: present public URL hyperlinks to three to five work samples/tasks that greatest symbolize your profession, aesthetics, and imaginative and prescient, and exemplify the physique of labor you want for the jurors to assessment. 
  • Press clippings: present a public URL hyperlink (e.g., Dropbox, Google Drive) to a letterhead-sized PDF of press clippings about your work, or a hyperlink to a viewable PDF model of the press clippings about your work. 
  •  2 references: present the names and contact data of two references.
• Sign an age exception self-attestation should you have been born between January 1, 1985, and December 31, 1986.
• Submit a accomplished application by Monday, June 9, 2025, 5:00 pm ET.

Click here to apply

For extra data, go to Vilcek Prizes.