JAMAICAN Matthew Harris, who designs under the label Mateo, was yesterday named by Vogue CFDA as one of 10 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalists.

The Montego Bay-born designer, who was first featured in the Jamaica Observer newspaper and was a 2015 Take Style Out guest, said he was honoured and humbled to have been considered and to be shortlisted. “It is humbling, but I am delighted that I can hopefully inspire more young designers to follow their dream,” he told the Observer.

Harris is the first Jamaican-born designer to have been shortlisted.

This year’s selection committee includes four new judges — Nicole Phelps, director of Vogue Runway; Eva Chen, head of fashion partnerships at Instagram; Roopal Patel, senior vice-president and fashion director at Saks Fifth Avenue; and Joseph Altuzarra, who won the CVFF himself back in 2011.

The judges yesterday narrowed down the piles of applications to just 10 labels that make up the class of 2017. They’ll spend the next few weeks reviewing their current collections with the judges, and in October they will go west to Los Angeles to put on a fashion show at the Chateau Marmont. But before that, many of them will present their latest work at the Spring 2018 New York Fashion Week shows in September.

The winner and two runners-up will be announced at a gala in New York on November 6, with the winner receiving US$400,000, and the two runners-up taking home US$150,000 each.

The 10 designer finalists and their labels are:

• Ahlem: Ahlem Manai-Platt

• Chromat: Becca McCharen-Tran

• Dyne: Christopher Bevans

• Jordan Askill: Jordan Askill

• Mateo: Matthew Harris

• RtA: Eli Azran

• Sandy Liang: Sandy Liang

• Telfar: Telfar Clemens

• Vaquera: Patric DiCaprio, Bryn Taubensee, David Moses, and Claire Sully

• Victor Glemaud: Victor Glemaud

Harris, a successful jewellery designer who visits his family in St James regularly, proudly stated that his seamstress mother is the person who exposed him to design, and that he took inspiration from Jamaica and New York “when designing his graphic, architectural collections”.

Harris, according to the National Jeweler, attributes his eye for colour solely to his birth country… My Jamaican heritage and upbringing influences my work greatly.

“The Jamaican flag consists of the colours gold, green and black. In my creations I tend to sneak this colour scheme in the collection using yellow gold, black onyx and malachite. It pays a subtle homage to Jamaica,” he told the magazine.

Harris is the black jewellery designer of choice at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, and showed his designs at the recently concluded Caribbean Fashion Week in Kingston, Jamaica.