H&M Design Award 2013 – the winning collection by Minju Kim at H&M and Opening Ceremony

The winner of the H&M Design Award 2013, Minju Kim, has developed pieces from her collection with H&M to be sold at selected H&M stores this autumn. Minju, a 27 year-old graduate from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, was selected by a jury of international fashion experts for her collection which transformed characters into outfits. As part of her overall prize, nine women’s pieces and two accessories have been developed with the H&M design team. The collection will be available from October 17 at selected H&M stores in Sweden, Denmark, the US, UK, Japan, South Korea, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany as well as online. It will also be available at Opening Ceremony in New York, Los Angeles and London, the first time an H&M collection will be sold at Opening Ceremony stores.


“Creating this collection with H&M has been an amazing experience. My designs are about turning characters into outfits, and it’s exciting to think that these characters will soon be worn by people around the world. Winning the H&M Design Award has given me a unique insight into the global fashion industry,” says Minju Kim.

“I’m so happy that pieces from Minju Kim’s winning collection from the H&M Design Award 2013 will soon be available. Minju has such a unique design signature, one that combines playfulness, fantasy and optimism with great creativity and technical skill. These pieces by Minju Kim show H&M’s commitment to the future of design and to helping move fashion forward,” says Ann-Sofie Johansson, H&M’s Creative Head of Design.

"Minju Kim is a shining gem and a real treasure. She is a girl with great imagination and skills, and has a unique personal vision and approach towards fashion. It has been a pleasure to work with her,” says Walter Van Beirendonck, Head of the Fashion Department at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp.

Minju’s pieces for H&M bring the dream world of Manga to life with unique cuts and clever fabric combinations. A collarless coat in vivid yellow, a short jacket in two contrasting jacquards or a cape made of black wool creates a sweet rounded silhouette. The textured heavy knit links the sleeves to the body with cartoonish curves, while a neoprene-fronted sweatshirt is printed with Manga-inspired images drawn by Minju herself. A paneled minidress mixes matt with shine, while jacquard trousers keep their structured shape. To complete the look there’s a black and white wedge platform lace-up and a characterful turquoise leather collar.

Minju is a designer from South Korea who graduated in spring 2013 from the final Masters year at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. She won the H&M Design Award 2013 with her collection titled “Dear My Friend”, inspired by Japanese Manga cartoonist Junji Ito, and received a €50,000 prize, a show at the Mercedes-Benz Stockholm Fashion Week in January 2013 and the chance to develop pieces from her collection with H&M.

The H&M Design Award, an annual prize launched in 2012, was established to encourage and support young fashion graduates as they set out at the very beginning of their careers. For the 2013 awards, graduates from nineteen design schools in eight countries were considered competing first to be the local winner before showing their work to a grand jury. The jury, which included H&M’s Creative Head of Design Ann-Sofie Johansson, designer Jonathan Saunders, editor-at-large Tim Blanks, blogger and photographer Hanneli Mustaparta, fashion journalist Kristopher Arden-Houser, stylist Leith Clark, photographer Sølve Sundsbø and H&M’s creative advisor Margareta van den Bosch, chose Minju Kim as winner of the 2013 H&M Design Award.