Prassanna Pathmanathan named Young Creative Entrepreneur of 2012

Friday, 30 November 2012 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The Young Creative Entrepreneur Design and Fashion Award is a British Council initiative offered in partnership with the Sri Lanka Design Festival. This award, originally titled the Young Fashion Entrepreneur Award was revamped this year to include both the ‘design’ and ‘fashion’ sectors.

The award seeks the brightest stars in the world of international design and fashion while recognising the importance of entrepreneurs in driving forward the design and fashion industries in their own countries.

This year, applicants for this award were drawn from more than 20 design and fashion sectors, including architecture, interiors and environment, product design manufacture, fashion, textile, accessories or perfume design and production, design and fashion retail, design and fashion promotion, design and fashion product research, sourcing, supply chain management, design and fashion marketing, PR, branding, communications, journalism and publishing.

Out of many who applied for the award and many short listing processes, the award was bagged by a talented young man, Prassanna Pathmanathan, who is a communication/PR consultant, corporate trainer and lecturer.

Although Prassanna’s full time career is not in fashion, but the interest and commitment he showed in the areas of fashion and design has made him the winner this time. He’s a fashion incubator (promoter) and promotes Sri Lankan fashion talents in many forms.

He’s a fashion journalist, fashion stylist, fashion show organiser/director and directs and organises fashion shows and contests to give a platform to the young budding design talents of Sri Lanka. He is also the National Director of Sri Lanka for the Mr. Earth worldwide pageant and was the first Asian to judge this prestigious pageant last year.

As the YCE award winner for 2012, Prassanna attended a tailor-made study tour in the UK this September. He attended London Fashion Week and the London Design Festival, participated in trade events and has the opportunity to network with other national winners from all over the world and fashion leaders in the UK. He made a mark for Sri Lanka when he assisted and co-produced a fashion show in UK with Deborah Britz, a well-known show director, had a master class with UK’s celebrity designer Sir Paul Smith, styled shoots with Susie Colthard and attended many meetings and workshops related to fashion and design.

Another highlight of Prassanna’s UK tour was his website launch where Prassanna launched his official website (www.prassanna.net) at the British Council head office in London in the presence of all the other national winners.

When asking, Prassanna said, “I feel blessed to be the first male to win this prestigious award and to represent Sri Lanka with other national winners around the globe. This award helped me to understand the UK fashion industry and I brought back many learnings from the UK. Also, launching my fashion company to uplift the Sri Lankan fashion industry would become a reality through my UK fashion experience.

“There are many expectations from me from the Sri Lankan fashion community as the winner of this award, and I am confident that I will do the justice to the title and contribute to the growth of the Sri Lankan creative economy.”