Conner Ives is the winner of the 2025 BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund

The Importance of Investment for Emerging Designers

The bubbling excitement does not distract from the importance of the present task: to convince a panel that their burgeoning companies represent convincing cases for significant investments. Being on the panel is never an easy task, and each of this year’s candidates was so different from the next and really presented different suggestions for what they would do with the prize money.

The Challenges Faced by Independent Designers

The weight of the responsibility is emphasized by the notoriously enemy climate, which today’s independent designers are based in. It is obviously an honor to be part of the panel, but it is more than just an exciting moment, it is also an opportunity to hear from designers – to hear the challenges that they face and understand what it means to do business today. You just have to look at the news to know how difficult it is at the moment. This makes this kind of initiatives invaluable and offers designers a lifeline – not only through investments, but also mentoring and a ramp light.

The Designer’s Pitches

So what about the premises of the designer parking spaces for this lucrative opportunity? For Dimitra Petsa, it was about emphasizing the significant efforts that her brand has undertaken in order to establish itself as an industry-wide advocate of diversity. Dilara Findikoğlu, on the other hand, planned to use the investment to expand her existing company and work on a number of highly secret projects that are currently in progress. Edeline Lee, a designer who has enabled a business with a fully integrated production infrastructure in the past decade, planned to use the investment to enable direct-to-corner surgery.

Investment Strategies

For Byre and Ives, their intentions were to distribute the funds across the width of their business. They wanted to face their most important challenges, which mainly focus on production, product, and marketing and reach. The investment would be used to improve these areas and take their business to the next level. This approach would allow them to make the most of the investment and achieve their goals.