Dr. Martens and Central Saint Martins Announce Their Four Bursary Winners

British footwear brand Dr. Martens has just announced the four winners from the MA Fashion course studying at Central Saint Martins (CSM), University of the Arts London (UAL).

From the nine finalists representing some of the world’s most groundbreaking emerging design talent, four winners have been selected by a panel of industry experts — such as Darren McKoy, Fabio Piras, Lulu Kennedy MBE, and Erin Magee — and invited to work with the Dr. Martens design and production team to create prototypes of their unique 1460 boot designs.

Finlay Roberts, Yanya Cheng, Traiceline Pratt, and Valeria Pulici are the four winners of the competition — and each winner has been awarded a bursary of £5,000 GBP each to support the development of their creative practice during their final academic term.

Yana Cheng was chosen as a winner for her complex pattern cutting and folded and layered fabrics, in an approach that’s focused on a conversation between the designer and the wearer. Valeria Pulici — who worked in-house at BOY London — focused her design on streetwear, reworking everyday objects using upcycling, vintage pieces, second-life materials, and bioplastics.

Meanwhile, Traiceline Pratt, who grew up in the Bahamas, created womenswear with super-exaggerated sculptural shapes that distort the wearer’s silhouette, and Finlay Vincent Roberts — the designer behind his menswear-focused label, SYSTEM — created a final piece with 20 modular components that can be transformed into over 100 variations.

Each winner was awarded for their future-facing take on Dr. Marten’s signature 1460 silhouette, with each competitor encouraged to take inspiration from the legends that came before them in reworking this famed boot. Jean Paul Gaultier, Comme des Garçons, and Yohji Yamamoto have all been cited as inspirations, while each competitor has also used the DM silhouette as a canvas to express their distinct visual language.

Additionally, the students have been invited to explore the cobbler craft with an exclusive factory tour of the Cobbs Lane Factory, the heart of Dr. Martens, offering a first-hand insight into the footwear design process. Meanwhile, all content from the partnership has been captured by SXWKS, a London-based collective of interdisciplinary creatives with a mission to produce art through different mediums and support talent from diverse communities.