Environmental NGO Redress announces the 30 Semi-finalist designers of the world’s largest sustainable fashion design competition, the Redress Design Award 2023, and calls for the global public to vote for the designer who can best influence the future of the fashion industry.
The Redress Design Award, with Create Hong Kong (CreateHK) of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) as the Lead Sponsor, scours the globe for talent.
This year, the competition received over 400 applications from 46 countries and regions. The 30 Semi-finalist designers, among the world’s best emerging talents at tackling fashion’s growing waste crisis, are now waiting in the wings for the public to cast their votes for the ‘People’s Choice Award’.
The competition invites emerging designers to address a critical challenge of the fashion industry: how to create value from waste and design our way to a more sustainable, circular future for fashion. The resulting submissions demonstrate an exciting range of aesthetics, all infused with skill, creativity, and innovation, with this year’s Semi-finalists tackling unique waste streams from electronic waste to sofa upholstery and umbrellas.
Redress invites consumers to join the judging process, highlighting the importance of consumer participation in driving sustainability in fashion. Anyone can vote for their favourite Semi-finalist designer on the Redress Design Award website (HERE) from now through 5 May 2023.
“Consumers must be part of this conversation,” shares Christina Dean, Founder and Board Chair, Redress. “For too long, the production side of the fashion industry has been working solo. We see progress in the industry, but for sustainability in fashion to take off, consumers must be excited and participating. That’s why public voting is so important,” Christina continues. According to a survey by McKinsey & Company, 78% of the respondents stated that sustainability is somewhat or highly likely to be a key purchasing factor for mass-market apparel consumers by 2025.
The designer with the most votes secures a spot as one of the 10 Redress Design Award 2023 Finalists who will join an expenses-paid educational trip to Hong Kong in September to showcase their collection in person at the Grand Final Fashion Show. Each Finalist will also receive a digital book on sustainable fashion from Bloomsbury Publishing, and the winner will receive high-performance sewing machines from JUKI. All applicants have their eyes on the main prize: a design collaboration opportunity with Timberland.
Around 80% of a product’s environmental impact is locked in at the design stage, giving designers significant power in driving circularity for the fashion industry. Community drives change, and the Redress Design Award’s educational work in empowering designers towards circularity continues to be highly relevant in the current fashion landscape. The competition showcases how the next generation of designers discovers and works with unique waste streams, proving that they are the ones to watch and support in building a better future for fashion.
Kévin Germanier, competition judge and a previous winner of the Redress Design Award, says, “Sustainability has entered the mainstream fashion industry, which I’ve seen while showing at Paris Fashion Week. But we need progress to move faster. That’s why I’m so excited to see the fresh ideas from the next generation of circular design talents.”
The Redress Design Award 2023 Semi-finalists are:
- Aashita Jain, India
- Apoorva Dudeja, India
- Aya Letzter, Israel
- Frances Brunner, USA
- Giovanni Libero Zocchetta, France
- He Jingru, the Mainland
- Jasmine Leung, Hong Kong
- Jessica Horton, UK
- Júlia Cots, Spain
- Kim Yanghun, France
- Lenox Pinto, India
- Mandy Fong Sze Man, Hong Kong
- Mariona Urgell Baiori, Spain
- Melody Zhang, Hong Kong
- Miia Keskitalo, Finland
- Molly Ryan, Australia
- Nguyen Thien Thao, Vietnam
- Nils Hauser, Germany
- Pavneet Kaur, India
- Pham Duy, Vietnam
- Ray Yang Chen Jui, Italy
- Rose Brown, UK
- Ruwanthi Gajadeera, Sri Lanka
- Sandali Fernano, Sri Lanka
- Scarlet Wang, USA
- Simona Kyosovska, Bulgaria
- Stina Henriksson, Sweden
- Thach Tien, Vietnam
- Wen Hanzhang, Canada
- Yaroslava Kovalenko, Russia
More details of the Semi-finalists are available on the Redress Design Award website here.
Redress is also welcoming its second cohort of Rising Talents, a programme launched in 2022 to offer in-depth circular fashion training and mentorship to designers who showed exceptional potential in their competition applications. Six Rising Talents are selected this year, an increase from four in 2022.
The Redress Design Award 2023 Rising Talents are:
- Bethany Rothwell, UK
- Chung Tsz Ho, Hong Kong
- Hugo Dumas, France
- Ian Chang, UK
- Pachari Santichadsak, Thailand
- Yu Wing Shan, Hong Kong
Their profiles are available on the Redress Design Award website here.
HT
Source: Redress
