Celebrity Life
Meet the Winners of the Redress Design Award and Their Showstopping, Sustainable Looks
If it were not there before, 2020 has made sure that sustainability is now at the forefront when we’re talking about the future of fashion.
“Covid-19’s retail and supply-chain disruptions have stranded materials in warehouses, factories and stores globally. Now’s the time to catalyse the circular economy – and this is the focus of Redress,” says Dr Christina Dean, who in 2007 founded the Hong Kong-based charity dedicated to eliminating waste in fashion. The Redress Design Award, now in its 10th year, is the world’s largest sustainable fashion design competition, attracting competitors from around the world. This year, hundreds applied from 48 countries.
Just announced, the Redress Design Award 2020 winners – who were chosen by a diverse judging panel including designer and co-founder of Fashion Revolution Orsola de Castro, and fashion expert and writer Susie Lau (Susie Bubble) – presented a truly international line-up. Le Ngoc Ha Thu from Vietnam won the Grand Prize for Menswear, and Juliana Garcia Bello of Argentina walked away with the Grand Prize for Womenswear.
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Ruth Weearsinghe's design, which bagged the first runner-up Womenswear title at the Redress Design Award 2020. (Image: Redress Design Award)[/caption]
Almost as impressive was Sri Lanka’s Ruth Weerasinghe, who was inspired by the fights against climate change and pollution to create eye-catching, protective, detachable and ultra-durable pieces made from textile and industrial offcuts.
Meanwhile, Redress Design Awards Menswear winner Thu hit home with a colourful, cool and complex capsule that won him a place in the Timberland Global Apparel design team, helping to design and commercialise a capsule that will be launched in 2022. Titled Slow Boy Archive, the designer’s entry employed elements of Japanese-style Americana, using zero-waste patterns and recycled fabrics in subverted menswear classics. Thu will be working with Kevin Bailey of the sports- and street-fashion conglomerate VF, and Christopher Raeburn (founder of his own sustainable label, and global creative director of Timberland), both also Redress judges.
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Le Ngoc Ha Thu's designs, which won the grand prize for Menswear. (Image: Redress Design Award)[/caption]
Netherlands-based Bello, meanwhile, will be collaborating with upcycled label The R Collective on a 10-piece capsule collection to be sold commercially. The Argentine designer’s winning womenswear outfits wove a compelling story about community and heritage, using garments donated by neighbours and friends, and upcycling them to fashion-forward minimalist yet adaptable pieces with a clearly elevated aesthetic. Judges in the London session (where we sat in) commented that Bello’s work was impressive in look and ready to retail at any top boutique in the British capital.
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The Womenswear prizewinning look by Juliana Garcia Bello. (Image: Redress Design Award)[/caption]
As sustainable design becomes more sophisticated, the emerging designers attracted to it are likewise more globally and aesthetically aware each year. As this sector of fashion moves steadily towards the mainstream, for designers and the industry it’s also been a sharp learning curve about which theories and techniques work and which do not. The dream of a circular fashion system is edging closer to a reality. But to create real change, we’ll need big corporate game-changers to come together with a new, more conscious generation.
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Redress Design Awards 2020 Announces its 10 Finalists
The world's biggest sustainable fashion design contest, Redress Awards, born in Hong Kong, announces its 10 finalists including local designer Grace Lant.
“Fashion is in crisis. COVID-19 has devastated the business, the balance sheets and is affecting creativity on the drawing board," says Christina Dean, Founder and Chair of Redress. With the waste levels in the industry set to spike even more due to a drop in retail, and "dislocated supply chains that have stranded inventory and materials globally", it's only strengthened Dean's belief that "only the toughest and most talented designers will survive this crisis, and those designers who can up-cycle waste materials, like our 10 Redress Design Award Finalists, are already ahead of the pack as they enter a new fashion industry.”
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Christina Dean, Founder and Chair of Redress[/caption]
This year's Redress Awards comes at a poignant and timely period, when even the rest of the fast fashion and high fashion industries and looking to rethink the existing fashion cycles. The 10 global Redress finalists used a combination of zero-waste, up-cycling and reconstruction design techniques, whilst sourcing waste materials generated from all parts of the fashion supply chain and consumers. The Redress Awards is the world’s largest sustainable fashion design competition - with it's finale and winner announced in September 2020 in Hong Kong.
Finalists include Hong Kong Grace Lant, Gönül Yigit and Juliana Garcia Bello both from The Netherlands, Inhwa Jin from Korea and Tong Jianlong from Mainland China. The Womenswear Prize winner will join The R Collective, one of the world’s fastest growing up-cycling fashion brands that has sold on Net-A-Porter and Lane Crawford. And the Menswear winner will receive mentorship with experts at VF Corporation, one of the world’s largest apparel, footwear and accessories companies of iconic brands including Vans®, The North Face® and Timberland®.
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Sketches by the finalists of Redress Awards 2020[/caption]
2020 also marks the 10th cycle anniversary of the award, with many of it's alumni seeing game-changing moments in their career, such as Kévin Germanier, recently in Forbes’ 2020 Europe 30 Under 30 for Art and Culture and has has his up-cycled collections stocked in MatchesFashion.com, JOYCE Hong Kong and Moda Operandi as well as being worn by A-list celebrities, including Lady Gaga, Björk, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Swift and K-Pop star, Sunmi.
Making waves with the biggest number of public votes in the competition’s history is the Philippines semi-finalist menswear designer, Jann Christian Bungcaras and his up-cycled and reconstructed collection, Adam’s Dominion, which uses a variety of pre and post consumer waste.
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Be a Shopaholic – Without Creating Clothing Waste
We address the relationship between clothing consumption and waste, and call for responsible fashion citizenship.
The post Be a Shopaholic – Without Creating Clothing Waste appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.