Pepa Salazar and Sonia Carrasco, IED Madrid's alumni, are finalists at the Vogue Fashion Fund

Date

03 October 2023

The XII edition of the Vogue Fashion Fund announced the finalists and amongst them IED Madrid alumni's Pepa Salazar and Sonia Carrasco. Vogue Fashion Fund is the biggest fashion award held in Spain in collaboration with Inditex. Formerly known as Who's On Next, this award seeks to recognise and celebrate the new and emerging talents of Spanish fashion, with 100,000 euros in cash prize and a promotion to boost and increase the possibilities of showing their collections in a more international sphere.

PEPA SALAZAR

After completing her studies in Fashion Design at the IED Madrid, Pepa Salazar, a designer of Valencian origin, began her career in the creative team at Loewe and in 2013 presented her eponymous brand, with which she won the 2014 Mercedes-Benz Fashion Talent award. She was also among the finalists for the 2017 Who's on Next award.

Madonna, Kim Kardashian, Sita Abellán, Rosalía, Rossy de Palma or Úrsula Corberó are amongst the celebrities wearing her designs. She stands out especially for having been chosen by Rosalía as the designer of part of the wardrobe she wore in her live presentation of the Motomami album in TikTok. She has won awards such as the Nou Moda Fad and the IED Design Awards for Best Creative Direction. She also won the Samsung EGO Innovation Project competition with her third collection.

SONIA CARRASCO

Sonia Carrasco, also with Valencian roots and graduated in Fashion Design at IED Madrid, repeats as a finalist for this award, as she did in the year 2021.

When she was 17 years old, she took part in the Valencia Fashion Week. Later, she would join the teams of Alexander McQueen and the French house Celine. In 2019 she launched her eponymous firm, from which she has been advocating timeless and artisanal ways of approaching fashion design, always with a sustainable essence. This eagerness to create garments with a culturally relevant meaning and committed to the planet has defined her. As an example, Japan has become an important market counting with several selling points.

Her groundbreaking vision is committed in her latest collections to establishing a dialogue between sex and craftsmanship, trying to create pieces in which the past and the future go hand in hand.

Tradition and a know-how play a fundamental role in her creations, which she defines as pendants with the mission of taking culture to discover new limits, creating something that is traditional and at the same time innovative. According to Carrasco, this is the formula for taking both culture and society to the next level.

Good luck to our alumni!