CDFA/Vogue Fashion Fund Field Trip! Proenza Schouler and Uma Wang Swap Countries

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Beyond the traditional prize money and business mentorship, this year's CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund will sponsor a foreign-exchange program between American and Chinese designers, WWD reports. Fund winners Uma Wang of China and Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCullough and Lazaro Hernandez from the US will be swapping continents this May, and given Proenza Schouler's recent West-meets-East Fall 2012 runway show, the trip should provide plenty of inspiration for the designers at the very least.

Of course, it's meant to do much, much more than that. Wang will get support from established American companies, including Michael Kors, Theory, Barneys New York, Vogue, and Google; and the American designers get a chance to explore a lot of "growth potential" in the Chinese market (read: money making). And of course, all the designers will get schooled in cultural studies. To give you an idea of how revolutionary this exchange is, Michael Kors puts it like this: "In 1981 when I was starting out, our idea of global was Canada. We thought Holt Renfrew was a foreign account.”

· CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Unveils China Initiative [WWD]
· Proenza Schouler Goes East for their Fall 2012 Collection [Racked]