Rachael Adegoke has won The FACE Excellence Prize 2026. She took the award at Graduate Fashion Week, announced live in the room at the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane, to a cheer that said exactly how much it mattered. She is a final year student at the University of Westminster, and she is one of ours.
She walked into that room in good company. Back in May, three Westminster students made the national shortlist of just twelve: Khoo En Zhi, Rachael Adegoke and Aliyah Dankwah. Three names from one school on a list that short was already extraordinary, and all three carried their full body of work to Brick Lane to make their case in person. Standing there together, among the best final year talent in the country, was its own kind of win, and the whole studio felt it.
The prize exists to confront racial inequity in fashion education and to put Black, Brown and minoritised talent at the centre. FACE stands for Fashion Academics Creating Equality, and five years in, it has become a genuine marker of where the next generation is coming from. To be shortlisted at all means your work holds its own at the very top. Rachael's spoke loudly enough to take the prize.
Her collection, "Bridging Aso", fuses the material language of her Nigerian heritage with the tailoring codes of British menswear, building a contemporary dialogue around Black dandyism. It draws on the painter Ben Enwonwu and the Zaria Art Society, setting archival folk attire and custom beaded lace against relaxed, Henley Regatta-inspired suiting, with repurposed leather bags that tie London to Lagos. The judges singled out the depth of research, noting how thoughtfully she explored the intersection of British colonial narratives and contemporary cultural identity, and how cleanly she translated those themes into clothes.
"Winning this award means exposure," Rachael said. "I get to tell my story, explore my Nigerian heritage, and my design aesthetic." It is exactly the kind of platform the prize was built to hand over, to exactly the talent the industry has too often overlooked.
Westminster has form here. Nothando Ngwawaira won the same prize in 2023, and the fashion courses keep turning out designers with something to actually say, a lot of it circling identity and belonging, the same ground as Threads of Belonging. Three Westminster names on a shortlist of twelve was the story in May. Rachael carrying the prize home is the story now, and Khoo En Zhi and Aliyah Dankwah share fully in a year that put Westminster talent right at the centre of it. Congratulations to all three.
