Andam 2025 Grand Prix awarded to Meryll Rogge

The verdict fell on Monday evening in the Jardins du Palais Royal, where the atmosphere was feverish. The Meryll Rogge label, founded by the eponymous Belgian designer, won the grand prize at Andam 2025. The fashion competition, founded in 1989 by managing director Nathalie Dufour at the initiative of the French Ministry of Culture and Le Défi to support young designers, and chaired by Guillaume Houzé, also awarded its special prize to the young French brand Alainpaul.

For his part, Frenchman of Turkish origin Burc Akyol won the Pierre Bergé prize for a young French fashion company. As for Belgian Sarah Levy, she took home the prize for fashion accessories. The fifth prize, for innovation, created in 2017, had been announced in May, crowning this eighth edition Losanje, which has invented a technology to industrialize textile upcycling. Also awarded for the first time on this occasion was a special prize, to Goldeneye Smart Vision, a solution developed by the company Apollo Plus, which relies on advanced machine learning and AI to revolutionize fabric quality control.

The total prize fund for the competition is 700,000 euros, including the Andam Grand Prize (300,000 euros), the Special Grand Prize (100,000 euros), the Pierre Bergé Prize (100,000 euros), the Fashion Accessories Prize (100,000 euros) and the Innovation Prize (100,000 euros). The winners also each benefit from a year’s mentoring with a patron of the arts. Sidney Toledano, advisor to LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, will accompany the Grand Prix winner this year, as patron of the 36th edition and president of the jury, while Alexandre Mattiussi is the mentor for the Pierre Bergé prize.

Meryll Rogge was already one of Andam’s finalists in 2024. A lifelong fashion enthusiast, after graduating from the Royal Academy of Antwerp in 2008, the designer flew to New York, where she landed an internship with Marc Jacobs, one of her favorite designers. She stayed for seven years, working on women’s ready-to-wear. Back in Antwerp, she joined the teams at Dries Van Noten, another house she adores, where as head of design she steered the design of the women’s collections and worked on the designer’s perfume project.

In 2020, she took the plunge and launched her own label: a contemporary women’s wardrobe, mixing classic pieces and strict tailoring, outerwear and eveningwear, in daring and unexpected combinations. Despite Covid, her cheerful creations, at once sensual and masculine, artisanal and pop, caught the eye of buyers and today number around fifty. Also a finalist in 2025 for the Woolmark Prize, crowned Designer of the Year 2024 at the Belgian Fashion Awards, Meryll Rogge, the designer who presents her collections at Paris Women’s Fashion Week, was also among the semi-finalists for the LVMH Prize in 2022.

This year, Alainpaul is also a finalist for the LVMH Prize. The women’s, men’s and unisex brand, which has been parading at Paris Women’s Fashion Week since September 2024, was launched in 2023 by former dancer-turned-designer Alain Paul (36) with his husband Luis Philippe, who was store manager and visual merchandiser at Colette.

The designer, who has worked for Vetements under the aegis of Demna Gvasalia and Louis Vuitton with Virgil Abloh, aims to redefine the silhouette, exploring the evolution of body proportions, which have changed over the last ten years. He often takes as his starting point the dancer’s wardrobe, the spontaneity of movement and the choreography of garments around the body, to propose impeccably tailored pieces in beautiful materials with great attention to detail and construction.

The winner of the Prix Pierre Bergé has a very different profile. Born in France of Turkish parents, Burc Akyol grew up in Dreux in a North African community. The young man learned sewing from his tailor father. A finalist for the LVMH 2023 Prize, he studied at the IFM before starting to work for designer labels. Having worked in the studios of Dior, Balenciaga and Esteban Cortazàr, in 2019 he founded his own house of women’s and men’s demi-couture. Behind the impeccable cuts and draping, he expresses above all his vision, emancipating himself from the oriental stereotype.

The second time was the charm, as she was a finalist in last year’s Andam competition. In 2019, the new accessories prizewinner, Sarah Levy, had distinguished herself in another competition. At the Hyères Festival, she won the People’s Choice Award in the Fashion Accessories category, with a delightful collection of leather accessories. The Belgian designer was not originally destined for the fashion world, as she initially specialized in urban planning, working as an architect for ten years.

A jewelry enthusiast in her youth, she decided to change her life in her thirties, returning to study at the prestigious La Cambre school, this time in the visual arts and accessories section. She has collaborated for Givenchy, Marine Serre and Patou, among others, and has made a name for herself in recent years for her playful, practical accessories that sometimes extend the body like prostheses.

Last year, Andam awarded its Grand Prix to Lebanese-born Australian designer Christopher Esber, its Special Prize to 3.Paradis, the label of Frenchman Emeric Tchatchoua, while Edmond Luu’s Pièces Uniques won the Prix Pierre Bergé and Maeden, the leather goods brand run by Dutchman Christian Heikoop, the Fashion Accessories Prize.