Roc Nation and FIT crown Beatrice Mak in student design competition
Beatrice Mak won Roc Nation and FIT’s first student design competition, took home $20,000, and will see one design reach retail later this year.
Roc Nation just gave FIT’s student pipeline a real-world finish line. Beatrice (Xuan) Mak won the inaugural student design competition, earned a $20,000 grant, and will see one of her designs developed for retail later this year, a rare leap from classroom concept to commercial product.
The months-long competition was open exclusively to FIT students and ended with five finalists showing hoodies, sweatshirts, pants, hats and accessories before a live audience at Roc Nation’s headquarters in New York City. Mak, a Fashion Design BFA student, took first place. Jiwon Park, also in FIT’s Fashion Design BFA program, received $5,000 for second place, while Zion Burrell, a Fashion Design MFA student, took third and $3,000. Roy Luo and Nicole Willette rounded out the finalist slate.
What made the evening feel especially pointed was how plainly it mapped the path young designers now have to travel. Roc Nation and FIT framed the collaboration as a shared effort to expand access, creativity and opportunity, and the work onstage reflected that mandate in practical terms. These were not conceptual runway exercises built to impress judges and disappear. They were pieces with a future in wardrobe rotation, the kind of products that have to survive both scrutiny and a retail rack.
Mak’s win carries an extra layer of resonance. Born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, she brought an international point of view to a competition rooted in New York’s creative ecosystem. Her winning project drew inspiration from the film version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a reference that suggests wit, world-building and a designer willing to treat storytelling as part of construction, not decoration.
The finalists were mentored throughout the competition by FIT Fashion Design MFA Assistant Professor Zoran Dobric, giving the process a studio-to-market structure that felt more like an accelerator than a contest. Roc Nation CEO Desiree Perez said the students’ work exceeded expectations, while FIT president Jason S. Schupbach called the collaboration a sign of FIT’s role as a laboratory for creative careers and noted that FIT was Roc Nation’s first college partner. In an industry still obsessed with freshness, the sharper question is whether a young designer can also deliver product, and Mak just answered it with a prize, a platform and a retail date.
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