Celebrating the innovative minds driving the global shift toward circular fashion
The Redress Design Award is one of the leading global competitions for sustainable fashion, offering a vital platform for emerging designers to learn and apply sustainable design principles. By spotlighting innovative talent, this competition is driving the fashion industry towards a more circular and sustainable future. It’s a unique chance for passionate designers to make their mark on the world stage, with career-changing prizes at stake.
As the Grand Final Fashion Show approaches, you can have a say in who takes home the People’s Choice award. The designer with the most votes from the public will win, so be sure to cast your vote by EOD September 3rd, 2024. Vote Here!
Hugo Dumas
“I stand for the discovery of new techniques, technology, and savoir-faire for sustainability. As designers, we should all be moving into a new way of producing.”
Region: France
Design Techniques: Upcycling, Zero waste
Collection: Menswear
Hugo’s Redress Design Award collection, ‘Make Sort & Mend,’ reflects on our modern climate crisis in juxtaposition with rationing in World War II, which led to the British consumer campaign ‘Make Do and Mend’ that encouraged crafting. The collection creates modern menswear silhouettes out of old textiles, including a shredded military parachute upcycled into a zero-waste dress with a train, zero-waste siren suit, and trousers made from pure denim end-of-rolls, and a Canadian-smocked patchwork bomber jacket.
Louise Boase
“My goal is to shift overconsumption habits by convincing consumers that clothing should offer them more. Clothing should have meaning, adaptability, functionality, and a resonating personality.”
Region: Australia
Design Techniques: Upcycling, Reconstruction, Zero waste
Collection: Womenswear
Louise’s Redress Design Award collection, ‘DISSECT,’ explores pulling things apart, examining with playful curiosity, and reconfiguring whilst honoring origin. The collection features modular garments that offer versatility with multiple ways of wearing and using textile waste made from 100% natural fibers, avoiding synthetics and thereby avoiding microplastic pollution. Damaged mining pants are de-branded and reconstructed into new styles whilst maintaining their existing strong features. All prints are etched digitally with laser, minimizing dye, and energy waste.
Miranda Mallinson-Pocock
“My focus as a sustainable designer is on preservation, creating from what is already in our local communities, and designing pieces that have purpose and longevity.”
Region: United Kingdom
Design Techniques: Upcycling
Collection: Menswear
Miranda’s Redress Design Award collection, ‘Nostos,’ reflects the theme of homecoming and how we seek comfort in our homes during chaos and change. The collection repurposes home textiles such as bed linens and soft furnishings and reknits moth-eaten or neglected jumpers to create elevated everyday pieces that carry nostalgic memories. Felting adds patterns and textures to knitwear, along with improving the strength and durability of natural fibers such as wool and ramie.
Nguyen Thi Dung
“What we wear is not just our clothes, but symbols of responsibility for ourselves and our surroundings.”
Region: Vietnam
Design Techniques: Upcycling
Collection: Menswear
Thi Dung’s Redress Design Award collection, ‘BEYOND ILLUSION,’ is inspired by illusions and by the Romantic painting ‘Wanderer above the Sea of Fog’ by Caspar David Friedrich. The collection is created from a range of natural and local waste materials, including pineapple silk made from agricultural waste, damaged yarn from a home textile factory, and cut-and-sewn linen waste from a tailor shop. Hand-stitched details from the Japanese sakiori technique, traditional natural indigo dye, and modern cuts are combined to create practical, timeless, and adjustable designs, including a vest that can be transformed into a handbag.
Silvia Acien Parrilla
“My garments are living entities, intertwined with the synergy between designers and farmers—an alliance closer and more significant than commonly perceived.”
Region: United Kingdom
Design Techniques: Upcycling, Zero waste
Collection: Womenswear
Silvia’s Redress Design Award collection, ‘REGENERATIVE FOLKLORE,’ honors the designer’s organic farmer parents and cultural heritage with organic fibers and traditional Spanish materials like dry branches. The collection focuses on regeneration through its use of biodegradable plant-based, organically certified fibers such as pineapple, nettle, organic cotton, Tencel, banana, and esparto dry branches. Silvia also uses GOTS-certified and plant-based dyes from invasive species to simultaneously address biodiversity concerns. To mitigate waste, she also uses zero-waste patterning and adopts a made-to-order approach.
Su Anli
“It is essential for all stages of production to prioritize positive environmental impact.”
Region: Taiwan
Design Techniques: Zero-waste, Upcycling, Reconstruction
Collection: Gender neutral
Anli’s Redress Design Award collection, ‘Disappearing Space,’ draws inspiration from the disappearance of spaces worldwide due to pollution, extreme weather, and rising sea levels. Her collection repurposes discarded materials into origami-inspired and modular designs, using zero-waste patterns to avoid offcuts. Creating three-dimensional geometric spaces on the human body inspired by architecture, she uses sample yardage fabric and incorporates longevity by allowing transformation, replacement, and various configurations through Lego-like separation and connection with loops and ropes.
Tian Ruyin
“My goal is to show that sustainable fashion is not only possible but necessary to protect our planet and resources.”
Region: Mainland China
Design Techniques: Upcycling, Zero waste
Collection: Gender neutral
Ruyin’s Redress Design Award collection, ‘STRIP STRAP STRIPE,’ is inspired by her grandmother and the chaos of memory loss through Alzheimer’s disease. The collection explores aiding memory through cutting patterns and folding strips of fabric, forming zero-waste garments. Ruyin designs for low impact by selecting materials such as organic cotton and recycled fibers from end-of-rolls and cut-and-sew waste. The garments are durable and versatile, with multiple ways of being worn via removable parts. Secondhand cotton ribbons are spliced into the garments to elevate their style, including a zero-waste vest made from a single piece of ribbon.
Tiger Chung
“I focus on a people-centric approach to clothing, believing that people wear clothes, not the other way around.”
Region: Hong Kong
Design Techniques: Upcycling
Collection: Gender neutral
Tiger’s Redress Design Award collection, ‘The Wanderer/無依者,’ is a reflection on the wealth disparity in fashion and is inspired by the unique clothing and lifestyles of ‘street wanderers.’ The collection uses upcycled materials, including commonly discarded items such as towels and curtains from hotels, felt from airports, car seat covers, and discarded sofas and mattresses, which ensures a stable supply of materials while creating solutions for waste. For patterns, they consider not only aesthetics, which they believe is one of the most important factors for consumers, but also versatility and practicality.
Xue Wang
“We may not have the ability to change the pollution of factories, but as designers, we can remain steadfast in our commitment to sustainable concepts.”
Region: Italy
Design Techniques: Upcycling, Zero waste, Reconstruction
Collection: Womenswear
Xue’s Redress Design Award collection, ‘Xiapu · Abundant Wind and Blooming Flowers,’ honors the cultural heritage of fisherwomen from Xiapu Village in Fujian, China, wearing flower crowns. The collection is made using zero-waste patterns and three-dimensional cutting. The garments are designed to be worn in multiple ways, for different occasions, to enhance their longevity. Snow incorporates seashells collected from the village by laser-cutting and sewing them onto twisted end-of-roll factory fabrics and infuses the designs with reactive dye digital printing, which reduces water and air pollution.
Zari Qanei
“Sustainability can be achieved not only in a garment or in one collection, but as part of people’s culture, especially in my country Iran, which has a rich history in clothing.”
Region: Iran
Design Techniques: Upcycling
Collection: Womenswear
Zari’s Redress Design Award collection, ‘The Mystery of Wilderness,’ reflects on nature’s dominance over humanity and explores clothing as a response to the brightness of the sun and stars. The collection upcycles textile waste, such as a traditional southern Iranian scarf with Kho’s embroidery, a velvet tablecloth, and an old lace curtain. For trims, sequins are cut from compact discs, and a collar is decorated with coins sewn by velvet waste straps. The looks are designed for longevity with a basic and practical style for everyday wear, and button loops make for easy repair when needed.
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