Hyderabad: Cotton Council International (CCI) received a record 1493 entries and announced the final 13 contestants for the Fourth Edition of its fashion design contest – Let’s Design. Rina Dhaka and Shantanu & Nikhil Mehra, Neha Dhupia will be the Jury members for the contest. This pan-India initiative gives aspiring designers an opportunity to showcase their talent and creativity with the country’s most important textile fibre and the backbone of Indian fashion – cotton.

The 13 shortlisted contestants were Kanika Seth, Ishan Mazumdar, Mehendi Sharma, Umesh Kumar, Riya Mondal, Lalit Senger, Aniket Satam, Kritika Gupta, Astha Narang, Aradhana Dutta, Vaibhav, Mazhar Khan and the surprise entry Dhruv Singh.

The theme for the preliminary rounds this season – ‘Design for your icon’ – was all about celebrating one’s muse or inspiration. Design hopefuls submitted a sketch of an original design for their icon along with a concept note.  Shortlisted semi-finalists were invited to Delhi to present their design portfolio to the judges for further consideration.  The high quality of submissions resulted in the judges increasing the total number of finalists from 12 to 13. The selected 13 finalists will remain in Delhi at a ‘Reality House’ to compete in a series of challenges specially designed to highlight the many facets of cotton in the reality series ‘Let’s Design’, which will air on Zoom entertainment channel.