“You can see in the picture that I'm just in disbelief. I’m shaking their hand, thinking ‘what’s going on?’
When Michael Nicholas Genao first set foot onto 91视频’s (DMU) campus in Leicester, he was not confident in his designs. He loved fashion and was inspired by people’s creative nature but he had never created anything himself and felt, at times, like the industry wasn’t for him.
Born in New York, Michael’s family moved to Bulgaria, and he found himself splitting his time between the Big Apple and Eastern Europe. He was fascinated by Bulgaria’s vibrant cultural traditions but didn’t see that reflected in the people’s appearance – a stark contrast to the expressive and colourful style of New Yorkers that captured his attention from an early age.
Now, the 23-year-old has managed to blend his two loves into a single garment that won this year’s Skin Innovation Awards, netting Michael a £1,000 cash prize, courtesy of the Worshipful Company of Curriers.
Michael Genao
Michael's reaction just after winning the 2025 Skin Innovation Award
The organisation is one of the ancient livery companies in London and can trace its lineage back to 1217. It celebrates the craft of the currier, a leather specialist who prepares and finishes the material after the tanning process.
Michael’s jacket, which is made of sheepskin, is based on the pagan tradition of Kukeri - where, Bulgarian men don wooden masks and outfits inspired by Balkan mythology and scare away evil spirits with traditional dances and rituals.
“I find it [Kukeri] so beautiful, and I wanted to take from it to showcase this side of my home,” Michael said.
“Seeing demon hunters in these full sheepskin outfits while they dance just inspired me to learn how to experiment with sheepskin.
“It is hard to work with, though and my technicians and teachers probably hated me because I kept pushing the material and asking for the almost impossible. There were a lot of mistakes but from each failure, I learned something new.”
Michael Genao 253695_clean
Michael's sheepskin outfit, inspired by Kukeri
Michael’s second design is a pair of shorts that feature runes – characters from Germanic and Balkan alphabets that were believed to symbolise a magic power – embroidered into the leather.
“It’s partly inspired by New York street art,” Michael added. “You’ll see graffiti stickers around the city and it can be political, or just expressive. People have the freedom to say what they want to.
“I wanted to do something similar but blend it with Bulgarian tradition, so I embroidered my own runes, which represent more contemporary values, such as resilience.”
Leatherworking is one of the oldest crafts in existence, with the discovery of a 15cm leather shoe in Kent suggesting that the trade in the UK dates back as far as 881BC at the very least.
91视频is among the institutions trying to keep traditional leatherworking skills alive in the UK and each year hosts a specialist workshop for final-year students.
It’s one of the reasons why the Worshipful Company of Curriers returns to 91视频to judge students’ work and present the Skin Innovation Award.
Having secured a coveted apprenticeship at the London Fashion Academy, founded by renowned luxury shoe pioneer Professor Jimmy Choo OBE, Michael one day wants to establish his own brand.
His brand, however, will go beyond a conventional fashion label and showcase the talents of those within the creative and fashion industries. wants to focus on collaborating with others.
Michael Genao
“I want to create my vision through other people’s lens,” he said. “I want to create sculptural pieces with artists or footwear professionals, or graphic designers to create something unique. I’d set the parameters but would allow them to push their creativity too.
“Ultimately, a lot of the work would be around showcasing cultures that are at risk of being forgotten. I want to teach future generations how to represent their upbringing and traditions through their work.
“That is the dream.”
While Michael secured the top prize, there was recognition for Samantha Gillet-Jones and Eden Lissart-Jones, who were both named Distinguished Runners Up for their garments.
In a similar vein to Michael, Eden took inspiration from the country where she spent her early childhood.
Growing up in Chamonix, nestled in the French Alps and overlooked by Mount Blanc, she naturally fell in love with the mountains that surrounded her community, before moving to the distinctly flatter landscape of Burton-on-Trent.
Eden wanted to capture not only the beauty of nature in her work but also its sheer size.
She said: “The Romantics believed in the ‘sublime feeling,’ ; a powerful feeling that things are so much bigger and more important than yourself. So, I wanted to convey that through fashion and link it to sustainability. Nature will be here before us and after us, it is important to consider that when creating a garment”
For Eden, there’s nothing that encapsulates that sublime feeling more than an avalanche. Beautiful, destructive and completely unstoppable, Eden’s work, consisting of three outfits, starts with a calm, tranquil piece before the avalanche, the second highlighting the chaos of an avalanche, while her final piece demonstrates the destruction of a subsequent landslide.
Eden garments
Eden's outfits, inspited by the 'sublime feeling' and the destructive beauty of avalanches - Eden far right
“I experimented with wet moulding and laser cutting leather to try and create these natural forms. I didn't want it to be too symmetrical because I wanted it to emulate the rock face and the negatives in the rocks.
“I also explored different shapes. In my second outfit I created a waspie with exaggerated pointed hip. I wanted to play on distorting the form to make the model's form look mountainous to create that sublime feeling.”
Eden headshot
“Parts of these outfits are display pieces that you could never wear every day, like many show pieces that we see or red carpets and catwalks. I wanted to create this with confidence about its end-of-life journey. The leather pieces that I wet moulded, are made from vegetable tanned leather. They will biodegrade because the leather I used can degrade faster because it has undergone fewer treatments."
As part of her entry, Samantha Gillett-Jones developed her own cost-effective way to emboss her designs on to leather.
Samantha - outfit
Samantha's embossed leather outfit, which features a floral design
Traditionally, embossing is done through brass plates, which Samantha would have had to design to order, wait for them to arrive, before she could even test out the design on the material. Her own practical method saw her design multiple acrylic moulds and soak the leather, before placing it in an old printing press to apply the pressure and force the material up into the mould.
This enabled her to test out multiple ideas before she settled on a design that represented her personal journey of transitioning into a trans woman.
“My inspiration was the stigma behind transgender surgeries,” Samantha said. “There are views out there that this type of surgery is mutilation and people don’t understand the risks.
“I deliberately wanted to make the leather look as if it has been intentionally scarred, but it’s actually scarred in a pretty, floral pattern. Trans people are fully aware of the risks of the surgery, and the positivity of being your true self outweighs those risks. It’s not a foolish decision and I wanted the floral pattern to show this.”
SAMANTHA G 6
Her work not only resonated with the Worshipful Company of Curriers but also the Leathersellers' Company, which picked her embossed leather garments as the top prize at this year’s Leathersellers Awards.
Samantha said: “I’d love a role specialising in leather, but any kind of job in fashion that includes interesting textiles will be up my street. I’m a very material-driven designer and that’s always at the forefront of my work.”
Posted on Wednesday 9 July 2025