A Ukrainian footwear student at the London College of Fashion (LCF), Yevheniia Mizevych, has won the design category at the 13th annual Cordwainers Footwear Awards held in London.
Mizevych’s design win, which also comes with a £3,000 first prize, took the award for her submission ‘The Mine’, drawn from her family’s heritage “with pit ponies and coal mine conveyor belts part of her unique design inspiration.” Second Prize (£2,000) was awarded to Ceci Sariol (LCF) with Silva Coco (LCF) placed third with a prize of £,1000.
Winner of the £3,000 ‘Craft of Shoemaking Award’ for 2026 (CoSA) was Matthew Gillgraduate of the Cordwainers Footwear BA course at LCF, whose first-place wool and leather boots “explored the idea of shoes as objects of skills, failures, affordances and tactile engagement.” He also receives 12-days of tuition with bespoke shoemaker Carréducker as part of the overall award.
Second place went to full-time engineer Damon Ma (£750) with his metallic green, storm-welted monkey boots and third place, to luxury leather artist, Ross Edwin Bell (£500) with a pair of riding boots, for their “elegant simplicity belying a complex handsewn construction.”
Other key prizes included the Stuart Weitzman Award for Creativity, which was won by Anna Boutashkova (£1,500) of the Royal College of Art (RCA) whose submission ‘Objects of Continuous Gestures’ was praised for its “fluid beauty.”
The new Daniel Charkow Emerging Soul Award (£1,500) went to Haiyu Bo (LCF).
Footwear legends Manolo Blahnik was also given the Sue Saunders Award for Excellence “in acknowledgment of his dedicated commitment to creativity and craftsmanship.”
Andrew Peal, master of the Cordwainers, praised the finalists for heeding the call ‘to be bold; be creative’, adding: “Footwear design and manufacture is worth over £700 million in the UK alone and… the Cordwainers would continue to encourage and celebrate the talent that is a keystone of the British shoe industry.”
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