The International Woolmark Prize is the competition that launched the careers of Saint Laurent and Lagerfeld, Yves pipping Karl to the top spot in 1954, as decreed by Hubert de Givenchy and Pierre Balmain.

Tonight sees the finale of the 2013 prize, in the revived Merino-promoting competition, which crosses borders and cultures to hunt out talent from around the world, judged by Diane von Furstenburg, Donatella Versace, Franca Sozzani, Victoria Beckham, Carla Sozzani and Tim Blanks.

What better chance to catch up with fashion's most eloquent, discussing both the prize, the ins and outs of showgoing and off-catwalk life.

Dazed Digital: What does the Woolmark Prize mean to you?
Tim Blanks: Recognition of a new wave of fashion talent.

DD: How has the judging process been? Has there been tea and garibaldis with Donatella? And what are you looking for in the winner?
Tim Blanks: So far, I've sat in on the judging for the European candidate. The global judging happens before the award. That's when the cookies come out for DV. I'm looking for the same things I always look for in a collection, technique and native talent, for sure, but also the ability to ensnare me with a story.

DD: Show season is upon us and you're a veteran of the marathon. What are your tips for getting through fashion month?
Tim Blanks: Berocca… and oysters.

DD: Have you ever seen a collection or show and been lost for words? In a good or bad way…
Tim Blanks: Yes, I've been moved, but never to the point where I can't verbalise why.

DD: Ever fantasised about doing a collection? What would it be like?
Tim Blanks: No, that's not one of my fantasies. But I wouldn't mind the whole Helmut Lang package.

DD: You're known for elevating the concept of a runway review. Is there a word you love so much you have to reign yourself in from using it all the time?
Tim Blanks: Transmogrify or Mitteleuropa.

DD: You've two Jack Russells, Annie and Stella. Why do you think dogs are so popular with people working in the industry?
Tim Blanks: I never thought about that. Why would fashion people be any more subject to the call of the canine? Besides, Jack Russells are impossible to resist, whatever your vocation.

DD: You came to fashion through music. What records are you enjoying at the moment?
Tim Blanks: First, David Bowie releases his birthday surprise, then My Bloody Valentine drops MBV out of the blue. I'm gripped! I also love Andy Stott's record.

Cult experimental band PVT premiere their stunning fourth new album,Homosapien, in an exclusive full stream on Dazed Digital. Coming three years after 'Church With No Magic', having pivoted from one band name to the next, the Australian outfit have re-arrived with an 11-track record that invokes from the shadows dark electro beats, but whose rhythmic ensemble is, instead, intended to inspire optimism.

As it retains a monophonic tone through its beats, it almost promises certainty through its listening. But in opposition to its name Homosapien, the record is daubed with unearthy-like tones that flit from one sphere to the next, layered with an in-flux of jittery, oscillating vocals from Richard Pike, the possibility of knowing what to expect is taken away again, making for interesting and thought-provoking listening.

Dazed Digital: The titles for your previous albums and track titles for your new record Homosapien are pretty dark. Is that just something you're naturally drawn to?
PVT: Hmm, that's interesting 'cause I don't see Homosapien that way. For me it's a very positive record. It was a positive experience to make and although the songs do contain sadness, it's mainly hope. The title track, the lyric is 'you're the same as me - homosapien'. I think that's a positive message; we're all human, we're all cut from the same cloth. Having said that, yes, our last record was dark - deliberately dark. This one is more... spiritual, I guess. Maybe I am drawn to noir-ish things. But it's always about balance. You need dark to appreciate light, right?

DD: Where did the inspiration for the album first come from / what is it based on?
PVT: The first lyric I wrote was for Evolution, track two on the record. It's about your own personal evolution - 'you can never know the evolution of a heart'. Only you, personally, can know your own history, and how your heart makes its choices. Also, a big inspiration was a documentary I saw by English filmmaker Adam Curtis. He has an amazing style when looking at history. Everything has a butterfly effect, everything is connected. That was the start of the idea. I hope not to sound really nerdy, but there's a famous philosophy book called Mille Plateaux (A Thousand Plateaus). I haven't read all of it, it's far too complicated, but it's a world view about the interconnectedness of everything; all philosophies. I then saw the words Homo Sapiens on a poster for a museum, on a trip to Italy of all places. The cradle of civilization. It seemed like the perfect title, to put it into one word Homosapien, seemed to make it more descriptive.

DD: Billed as your most 'accessible' album to date, was this a conscious decision in the production process?
PVT: Good question. It's never a conscious decision to make something 'accessible'. It's a dangerous trap to use words like that when creating. You don't want to spook the muse.But we wanted the album to sound more human, warmer, and definitely calmer. More open than before, not so anxious and twisted and dense. That was conscious. Whether it's accessible or not is really not up to me.

DD: What's next?
PVT: I'm sure we'll do some touring with the record, Europe/UK in April-May. We've already played in the new songs last year, doing some tours with Bloc Party and Gotye - so they're ready to take on the road. Also, I've already started work on new songs. I think the next one will be very different again.

Called into the office, take a seat. "Napoleon" will be with you shortly. The chair beside me is vacant, the light in the windowless room scans at my eyes. I sign away my right to have a fellow member of staff present for the meeting. It’s a formality, they’ll be good to me, just as I’m good to all the authors I plagiarise.

A shock. At the end of my three-month probation period, I’m out of the cultural place, mumbling the wordswork ethicto myself like an item on a foreign menu, wondering if the managers decrypted or traced that email I sent anonymously.

“You can appeal,” says Napoleon.

I throw my hands up in the air. Then leave. Two days later my other job falls through. This is the nightmare of everyday life.

We’re clinging onto a liberalism that will, without doubt, be defeated at the next general election. A recent survey found that attitudes are hardening against the poor, even among young people, usually a more tolerant demographic. Outside the bubble of lefty blogs and comment pieces, we may forget that there is a general approval of what the government is doing. A majority of people, for example, would restrict what can be bought with benefits – this effectively means food stamps. So what’s the point? If you can’t get a table, get a waiting job, right?

My friends who used to be on the dole aren’t anymore. Maybe the government was right after all – there was game to be hunted, we just weren’t hungry enough. Is it a coincidence the promise of the dreaded Work Programme made us all crawl off the dole somehow? Cooking pizzas for cash-in-hand money, labouring on building sites, bumming around on friends’ sofas, applying for postgraduate degrees we’ll never be able to afford, moving in with our boyfriends, making life harder for the ones we love? Some of us would have (re)turned to shoplifting, or slept underneath beds, starving and screaming, but we’d have found something somehow, or we’d have killed ourselves on the drugs that seem to stalk the unemployed and hold their heads under the covers each morning, unable and unwilling to get up and look for work.

The truth is, and not many liberals will say this, but a lot of people don’t want to work. The government is probably right. We are lazy, we are choosy. Because don’t you think you’d really have to be masochistic to activelychoosea lot of the jobs out there? To actuallywantto do this work, given the choice, knowing what we know?

As far as I can tell, the reason we’re elitist and choosy is because work has come to stand for something so much worse than we were promised. Promised by ourselves, the lecturers, the poets, the rock stars, the hand of history itself, which we thought would move forward towards greater equality, more opportunity, less misery – an end to deference, the shattering of glass ceilings. But for the first time since I can remember, history seems to be spinning backwards. And as my friend, the nearly-always-on-the-money Dan Hancox says, not back to the 1980s, but the 1880s. Old hierarchies are being consolidated through new power structures – internships, tuition fees, the pricing us out of cities, the rebranding of social security first as welfare and then as charity.

But wait. Everybody’s an artist! Everybody’s got something to say! Have we been coaxed into thinking we can all work for our own disgusting selves and our crippled ideology, outside of the present reality – become graphic designers and freelance photographers and whatever it is university courses train people to do? Most certainly. Our ambitious have given our masters something they feel they need to slap down, put in its place, remind thatsomebody’s got to serve at the till, tend bar, punch numbers into the database. Of course, they’re right. Somebody got to do it. Nobody ever denied that.

So I can’t ignore the fact that there are better solutions out there if we’d only consider them. Take the idea that the national debt ought to be paid off by the richest in society, which they could handle many times over. A 20% tax on the wealth of the top 10% – less in percentage terms than the cuts to housing benefit – would do the trick. Boom – gone. No more austerity, no more “tough decisions” of the kind that always wind up hammering the young and poor.

It would be great too if workers weren’t treated like disposable pieces of machine; if there was an actual incentive to get a job – if it felt like it meant something, and was worthwhile, as opposed to just another form of coercion. Hancox also has some enlightening things to say about this, too, with relation to what’s happening in the ‘utopia’ of Marinaleda in southern Spain, where the rogue mayorJuan Manuel Snchez Gordilloseems to be restoring some dignity for his people.

This is dreamy stuff, I know. I have under a month until I’m totally out of work again. I’m not sure what I’ll do.

Initiated by theLouis Vuitton Young Arts Project,Culture Shop: January Saleis a south London art group's calledArt Assassins’ most recent venture - an off-site live exhibition by bunch of 14-20-year-olds offering responses to the idea that ‘culture makes you who you are.’Installed – aptly – in a disused Poundland unit inElephant and Castle Shopping Centrethis space s far from your stereotypical white cube. Exchange is rife in the middle of the place once voted London's ugliest structure, but not of the materialist kind, as a plethora of audio and video works confront conventional cultural perceptions of profession, class, nationality and race.

True to their name, the Art Assassins are not taking the war on youth lying down. Back in Autumn 2011 they created a stimulating youth led publication in collaboration withHato Pressin response to the London riots -Voice of the Voicelessproving engagement and openness vital to the Art Assassins’ philosophy. Working with high profile collaborators no doubt enhances their message’s impact, the Young Art’s Project’s Summer Academy engaging in a public sculpture workshop with the well known Scandinavian duo Elmgreen & Dragset last August. As a three year partnership between five of London’s leading art institutions – Hayward Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, South London Gallery, Tate Britain and the Whitechapel – the Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project exposes the Art Assassins to an snazzy series of cultural programmes – keeping them busy alongside their regular SLG Thursday evening meetings, college and school commitments.

Ryan Valentine’s videoGamerand George Flanagan’sWe Don’t Get Lawyers ‘Round Here, are two of many works that illustrate the assassination of the commercialist dictum ‘nothing in this world is free’ through their poignantly open creative exchange. Voicing his cultural curiosities, 13-year old South London Gallery forum member George talks to Rose Commander -a paralegal at Goldman and Bailey Solicitors- about how ‘people from where I live aren’t lawyers’. Gemma Andrews’s live experimentElephant Toothpastedemonstrates how her cultural diversity is bubbling over (literally) in a confluence of art and science. Turkish Art Assassin Mehmet Ccel performs his passionate intro to professional wrestling inFront Bump/Back Bump,where in-between body crunching moves he demonstrates the importance of ‘bumping’ -the safety measure used in professional wrestling that determines learning how to fall without causing injury to yourself or others.