Ann's Blog

Meet Prabal Gurung

Prabal Gurung launched his first eponymous collection during New York Fashion Week in February 2009 with a presentation at the FLAG Art Foundation in Chelsea. For Fall 2010, he staged his first runway show in the Tents at Bryant Park.

Gurung was born in Singapore and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal. It was in New Delhi, India that his design career truly began. While studying at New Delhi’s National Institute of Fashion Technology, he apprenticed at several local production and fashion houses and designed with Manish Arora. Gurung’s travels took him to Melbourne and London, where he assisted stylists for various fashion shows and international publications. In 1999, after seven years of traveling, Gurung moved to New York City. He began his career in New York interning for Donna Karan while attending Parsons School of Design. In his first year, he was awarded the “Best Designer” title at the annual Parsons / FIT design competition.

After Parsons, Gurung spent two years with Cynthia Rowley’s design team, which allowed him to gain even more invaluable experience on both the design and business end of New York’s highly competitive fashion scene. Soon after, he became the design director at Bill Blass. After five successful years, Gurung left his post at Blass to launch his own collection, PRABAL GURUNG.

Since the launch of his collection, Gurung has dressed leading ladies including Michelle Obama, Demi Moore, Zoe Saldana and Oprah Winfrey, to name a few. In 2010 he was the recipient of the Ecco Domani Fashion Fund Award and received a nomination for the 2010 CFDA Swarovski Womenswear Award. He was chosen by the fashion industry’s leading editors, retailers, designers and business experts for one of the highly coveted design studios at the {CFDA Fashion Incubator} for 2010-2012. In July 2010, Prabal was selected as a finalist for the 2010 CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund.