The Australian Fashion Foundation Scholarship 2024 winners have been announced
At the soirée, which honours the work of emerging Australian designers, two scholarship recipients were chosen and granted an international placement.
Since their inception in 2009, the Australian Fashion Foundation’s annual Scholarship Awards have remained one of the most important events for emerging designers, ensuring their visibility and ongoing success on the world stage. The 16th annual AUSFF Scholarship Awards, presented by the Australian Fashion Council and The Next Generation, were held in Sydney last night, where a judging panel of esteemed industry figures—including designer Nicky Zimmermann and Vogue editorial director and publisher Edwina McCann—selected two winners from 10 recent fashion graduates across the country.
The winners—Ethan Bergensen, a graduate designer at UTS, and Indigo Stuart, of RMIT University in Melbourne—are recipients of a US$20,000 grant, as well as the opportunity to undergo an internship at an international fashion brand. Past scholarship winners have interned at Louis Vuitton, Alexander McQueen, Calvin Klein, and Narciso Rodriguez. These former winners have also gone on to achieve distinguished perches in global fashion, aided by the grant. 2015 scholarship winner Vlad Kanevsky is now a senior designer at Thom Browne, while 2014 winner Talisa Trantino is now head of design special projects at Loewe and creates the jewellery for the Spanish house.
“I’ve got no doubt that Ethan Bergensen and Indigo Stuart are some of the most talented candidates I’ve ever seen,” said McCann of the two winning designers of 2024.
Such an opportunity as the AUSFF scholarship is invaluable for a new guard of local fashion talent hoping to hone their skills overseas. Malcolm Carfrae, the New York-based Australian co-founder of AUSFF, is familiar with the increasing presence of Australians in the top echelons of the global fashion industry as it gears up for a year of shuffles and movements, including the changes surrounding Australian Fashion Week in 2025.
“The global fashion industry is experiencing a major shift of opportunity right now—we’re seeing a seismic transition of designers in the major houses, and in Australia I’m excited to see what will no doubt be one of the most important Australian Fashion Weeks in 2025, led by the Australian Fashion Council, which I’m grateful to call one of our partners,” Carfrae said in a statement. “This year’s finalists proved once again just how much skill, promise and prowess Australia has to offer in this area, and I can’t wait to see what lies ahead for our two winners.”
On Monday at Surry Hills’ Piermarq* gallery, guests including Vogue editor-in-chief Christine Centenera convened to see each graduate’s work before winners Bergensen and Stuart were announced. Bergensen, who graduated from UTS this year, is known for his intricate glamour and dresses stitched with thousands of semi-precious stones, informed by queer performance and nightlife. Stuart presented her honours collection, ‘Inheritance’, including skirts, dresses, tops and accessories made of lithe woven alpaca yarn and certified zero waste. Both emergent designers represented different aesthetics but were united by their reverence for artisanship, which will serve them well as they head overseas for forward movements in the fashion industry.
The full list of selected graduates is as below.
Ethan Bergersen (Fashion Design, UTS) @e.t.bergersen
Frank Taplin (Fashion Design, Whitehouse) @frank_taplin
Georgia Brookes (Fashion Design, RMIT) @gigiibrookes
Indigo Stuart (Fashion Design, RMIT) @indigostuart
James McKerracher (Fashion Design, RMIT) @jamesmckerracher
Kit Looi (Fashion Design, RMIT) @kitmlooi
Laura Heron (Fashion Design, RMIT) @laura.heron
Little Pat Mooreswell (Photography & Creative Direction, Whitehouse) @crowwithasword
Madison Cusumano (Fashion Design, Whitehouse) @maddieleigh.fashion
Yishan Yao (Fashion Design, Whitehouse) @_y13studio
