Ghanaian young designers Steve French and Afua Biney have been selected as part of the eleven young design talents to benefit from Gucci’s Design fellowship Program.
The program, which forms part of Gucci’s diversity and inclusion initiative seeks to promote cultural exchange between designers coming from different backgrounds. In respect to this, the program offers opportunities to underrepresented groups of talent worldwide from Ghana to Mexico.
Making its debut in March 2019, five finalists for each school across different product categories were selected from a total of 50 finalists. In efforts to make a final selection, the final 50 were invited to Italy for a week to discover Gucci in Rome and Florence along with a series of interactions and mentorship before the shortlisted 11 were made.
Countries that made it as beneficiaries of the program include; Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, China, Japan, Korea, Dubai, USA and Mexico. The selected individuals will join Alessandro Michele, creative director of Gucci and his team in Rome for a learning experience starting March 2020 for one year.