Three University of Westminster students have made the shortlist for The FACE Excellence Prize 2026. Khoo En Zhi, Rachael Adegoke and Aliyah Dankwah were named on 28 May, three of just twelve students picked from across the UK. One school, three names, on a list that short. That is the headline.
The FACE Excellence Prize has been one of the most important fixtures in graduate fashion since it launched in 2021. It exists to confront racial inequity in fashion education and to put Black, Brown and minoritised talent where it belongs, at the centre. FACE stands for Fashion Academics Creating Equality. Five years in, it has become a genuine marker of where the next generation is coming from. Any final year student on a BA fashion related course in the UK can enter, and it takes the whole field seriously, design, journalism, marketing, photography, communication, styling, creative direction.
What sets it apart is how wide it casts. This is not a design-only prize. A stylist, a fashion journalist, a marketer or a photographer can all stand on the same shortlist, which is closer to how the industry actually works than most awards manage. Entry is open to students directly, and an industry expert narrows it down to twelve.
Making that twelve means your work held its own against the best final year talent in the country. For Khoo En Zhi, Rachael Adegoke and Aliyah Dankwah, it has landed in their final year, the point where the work stops being coursework and starts becoming a practice. It is the kind of line that goes on the front of a portfolio and stays there.
Westminster has form here. Nothando Ngwawaira won the prize in 2023, and the fashion courses have kept turning out designers and thinkers with something to actually say, a lot of it circling identity and belonging, the same ground as Threads of Belonging. The teaching spans design, business, marketing and image-making, the same spread the prize is built to reward. There is a type that ends up here, clear on what they are about and not waiting for permission, and it shows in the work.
Next stop is June. The Graduate Fashion Foundation runs the prize, and the final judging happens live at Graduate Fashion Week, where a lot of careers actually start, the rooms where press, designers and the people who do the hiring are all paying attention at once. This year it lands at the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane from 15 to 18 June, Graduate Fashion Week's thirty-fifth birthday. Each of the twelve brings their full body of work to be judged in the room, and the winner is announced across the week.
The result is still open. The recognition is not. Three Westminster students are on a list built to back exactly the talent the industry keeps overlooking, and that is already the win. The rest plays out on Brick Lane in June, with all three in the room to make their case in person.
