MILAN – Duran Lantink was named the winner of the 2025 International Woolmark Prize at a ceremony here Wednesday.
The Dutch designer was handed the award by Donatella Versace, who was named this edition’s chair of judges, and Ib Kamara, the contest’s guest artistic director for 2025.
“We live in a grey world and Duran represents a much needed energy and a sense of humor and optimism with a respect for tradition and an anarchic sense of futurism,” said Versace.
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The designer will receive a cash prize of 300,000 Australian dollars, or around $195,000, 50 percent more than in previous years.
During the event Alaïa’s creative director Pieter Mulier and Südwolle Group were also presented with awards. The former scooped the Karl Lagerfeld Award for Innovation, given to a brand or individual within the fashion industry that has pushed the boundaries of merino wool innovation, while the latter won the Supply Chain Award, recognizing a member of the supply chain who has demonstrated leadership and innovation in sustainable practices.
Mulier was recognized for his Alaïa summer-fall 2024 collection made entirely from a single wool yarn. The global wool authority praised how Mulier worked in close collaboration with the brand’s longstanding textile and knitwear suppliers and challenged them to experiment with the versatility of Merino wool and reimagine the yarn in different forms and textures, from fluffy surfaces to technical ones in outerwear.
As for Lantink, he also impressed the Woolmark Prize jury for his skills putting a modern spin on traditional hand-knitting techniques. Garnering the most attention were those dresses in sculptural volumes and floating kilts wired up and three-dimensional – so they looked as if they were hanging in front of instead on the body – that appeared on the runway of his fall 2025 “Duranimal” show in Paris last month.
In receiving the prize, Lantink acknowledged his team and especially the community of 15 female knitters based in Amsterdam that helped him develop the collection. “It was so good to have people with expertise in wool and knitting and to have that conversation. For me, that was really important because I am not a knit expert,” said the designer.
“I keep discovering things about wool, and how in hand knitting there is a certain type of richness and soul. When you see the hand-knitted pieces, like the shirts, they feel so rich and you can’t accomplish that with a machine.” He also realized how big of a role community and the slow process play. “And that’s one of the most important things because I’m quite an impatient person – but I learned to be very patient,” he said.
Lantink teased the collaboration with the hand knitters might continue as “we might need to duplicate one dress for a big museum.”
Meanwhile, he hopes to use part of the cash prize to establish permanent roots “because we have been working for like over eight years in temporary studios where we never really could build our own base” and he’d like to “have a solid and safe space” where his four-person team can continue working.
As reported, in addition to Lantink, finalists competing for the award included Raul Lopez of New York label Luar; Rachel Scott of Diotima; Michael Stewart of London-based Standing Ground; Louis Gabriel Nouchi from Paris; Luca Lin of Act No.1; Ester Manas and Balthazar Delepierre of Ester Manas, and Meryll Rogge, former head of design for womenswear at Dries Van Noten.
For the contest, each of them received 60,000 Australian dollars to create a six-look merino wool capsule either as part of their fall 2025 collection, or in a standalone format. At least one look had to be presented exclusively as part of the International Woolmark Prize and all of them had to highlight merino wool’s versatility, innovative nature and have eco-credentials.
Their work was judged by a panel of industry experts that, in addition to Versace and Kamara, included Zegna’s artistic director Alessandro Sartori; Alessandro Dell’Acqua, founder and creative director of No. 21; image architect Law Roach; celebrity stylist and brand consultant Danielle Goldberg; Roopal Patel, senior vice president, fashion director of Saks Fifth Avenue; Sinéad Burke, educator, advocate and founder of Tilting the Lens; DJ, producer and artist Honey Dijon; fashion writer Tim Blanks, and Simone Marchetti, Vanity Fair’s European editorial director and Vanity Fair Italia’s editor in chief.
Ahead of the announcement, Sartori said his personal criteria in assessing the work of the finalists ranged from creativity to a sustainable vision. “Even when you are small, you can do a sustainable project because you sell few pieces, so you can control every single part of a chain,” said Sartori. “Or if you are big, you need to make critic choices and Zegna did those choices long time ago. So if you really want to pursue that path, you need to make choices, which are very peculiar to follow because you need to be with all your equation design-wise, construction-wise, fabrication-wise.”
Also returning as a juror, Burke noticed how conversations around sustainability felt more basic in past editions, when the main challenges included accessing dead stock, and now there’s a complexity of sustainability options designers are implementing, and that the customers are also driving.
“More than one finalist created an option that if you have a garment that for whatever reason you don’t like anymore, you return it to the brand and the brand completely renovates it for you, which also competes with the idea that we all want to be seen to be wearing something different on our own algorithms,” she Burke.
She also noticed “a huge sense of awareness of the global context in which we are living: If you are a person of color, if you are a trans person, if you’re a queer person, if you are a disabled person – those conversations rose in the room, both for the designers themselves, but also for the customers that they are designing for and the people that they are working with. And a sense of great uncertainty, sometimes fear, but also the idea that it is creativity and community that unites us. Not that fashion can be a solution to all of the challenges that we have, but the reality is that it can be a beacon of hope.”
If for Burke themes like identity and community added to the criteria of creativity and sustainability, Kamara underscored the innovation and commercial aspects. “Is it wearable? Is it a business? I think those are very important. I love fantasy, but I also work in a brand that sells ready-to-wear,” said Off-White’s creative director. Kamara recently stepped down at Dazed as editor in chief after a four-year tenure. He said he will continue to work in magazines but also wants “to do innovative stuff: I want to write a TV show, do music and just expand my universe.”
For Roach “to be successful, designers need a point of view. They need to have originality and perspective.” These are the elements he took into consideration both as a judge but when he chooses a piece for a celebrity for a red carpet moment. “I look for something that makes me feel something,” he said.
Ditto for Patel, who voiced customers’ perspectives, too. “First and foremost, it all comes down to having the fashion vision and the creativity and passion, it all comes down to product,” she said. “I think the customers are looking for the dream, they want to step into that. Today more than ever is more important to have that approach to design.”
John Roberts, managing director of the Woolmark Company, had the interest of the 60,000 farmers he represents top of mind when picking the winner. “For me it’s about who’s going to drive the most demand [of wool] in the longer term, but also be the greatest advocate and really an ambassador for our farmers. And who is going to change people’s perceptions about wool,” he said, stressing how the wool supply chain is under pressure, with prices being 40 percent down since COVID-19 and production dropping 20 percent in two years.
The ceremony capped the first edition of the International Woolmark Prize in its new biannual format. The fashion competition had been held annually since its relaunch in 2012 but last year it was extended to a two-year program with an enhanced focus on sustainability and innovation. At the same time, the Karl Lagerfeld Award for Innovation was open to any brand within the fashion industry for the first time, while previously it only went to emerging fashion labels.
Previous winners of the International Woolmark Prize include Lagos Space Programme, Saul Nash, Matty Bovan, Richard Malone, Bode, Rahul Mishra, Edward Crutchley and Matthew Miller, as well as the likes of Karl Lagerfeld, Yves Saint Laurent and Valentino Garavani.
