Young Designers Showcase their Collections Made from Textile Waste at the Redress Awards
By Valeria Ricciulli
Hong Kong-based organization Redress hosted a runway show on September 6, an event showcasing the work of eleven young fashion designers who created collections based from textile waste, as part of this year´s Redress Design Awards. Since 2011, Redress has hosted this award competition to educate emerging fashion designers on sustainable practices, and to showcase their work.
The competition’s finalists, hailing from countries like India, Taiwan, Denmark, France, Spain, Australia, Japan, Israel, the Philippines, and the U.K., participated in a nine-day bootcamp where they tested waste fabrics in a laboratory and heard insights from sustainable fashion industry professionals.
This year, the eleven finalists created collections based entirely from waste, including vintage kimonos, umbrellas, furniture offcuts, secondhand clothing, and sofa fabrics. Some of the pieces will be exhibited at Hong Kong’s Mercedes me Store until September 23.
Australian Tess Whifort won first place with her collection made from up-cycled deadstock, designed with zero waste patterns, and inspired by punk. Whitfort will now join The R Collective, a social impact fashion brand, to design a collection for retail.
If you want to know more about this year´s finalists, in this video you can see a sneak peek of all of the designers and what terms like “sustainability” or “fast fashion” mean to them.
A McKinsey & Company study shows that the amount of clothing produced globally exceeds 100 billion garments. Further, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, out of the 53 million tons of material used for clothing production annually, 87% is landfilled or incinerated after its use.
“I’m pleased to see the growing number of creative talents from around the world who realise that they have the power to make a positive difference to the environment through their designs and through textile waste innovations,” competition judge and CEO of TAL Group Roger Lee said.
The judges of the competition included Orsola de Castro, fashion designer, co-founder of Estethica and co-founder of Fashion Revolution; Denise Ho, fashion director of The R Collective; Johanna Ho, fashion designer; Roger Lee, CEO of TAL Group; and Clare Press, sustainability editor-at-large of Vogue Australia.
“These visionary young designers represent the future of the industry where waste continues to grow as a valuable resource for the industry to embrace rather than hide away as a dirty secret,” founder and board chair of Redress and co-founder of The R Collective Christina Dean said.
Every year, half a million tons of plastic microfibers, equivalent to more than 50 billion plastic bottles, are estimated to be released into the ocean as a result of washing textiles, according to a 2017 Ellen MacArthur Foundationstudy. Moreover, according toThe Sustainable Academy (SFA) and The Global Leadership Award in Sustainable Apparel (GLASA), 20% of freshwater contamination comes from textile treatment and dyeing.
“That future is now and it’s time to embed this new model for design as standard,” Dean added.
