Colin McDowell

[4] He was educated at Durham University (Hatfield College), where he followed the arts stream of the General Studies degree and took courses in English Literature and European History, having turned down a place at Oxford because he wanted to return to the North East.

[4][3] As a student in Durham he wrote for the university newspaper, Palatinate, alongside future Beatles biographer Hunter Davies, and produced the 'Film Notes' column – a review of recent cinema releases.

[3] He eventually lost interest in this and worked as an actor, appearing in several episodes of BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers and TV bit-parts as a generic foreigner.

[3] He has said that his proudest moment during his spell with The Sunday Times was when the designer Giorgio Armani threatened to pull his advertising from the paper (at £50,000 a page) because McDowell had given one of his shows a bad review.

[13] Alongside his work for The Sunday Times he continued writing books on the modern fashion industry and biographies of noteworthy designers, including close friend, John Galliano, Manolo Blahnik, and Ralph Lauren.

We are not giving the winner £100,000 to follow trends – we want them to set them!”[15] The scheme ended in 2013 when sponsorship became harder to secure on the back of the limited number of long term success stories to emerge from the initiative.