The Redress Design Award is the world’s largest sustainable fashion design competition. Organized by Redress, the competition works to educate emerging fashion designers around the world about sustainable design theories and techniques in order to drive growth towards a circular fashion system. By putting sustainable design talent in the global spotlight, the competition creates a unique platform for passionate and talented fashion game-changers to transform the global fashion industry and rewards the best with career-changing prizes to maximize long-term impact.
In September these 10 finalists showcase their collections and winners are announced who will receive money and mentorship towards a fashion career that works with, not against the planet.
Psy Lau
Psy’s Redress Design Award collection ‘A.D.H.D’ draws inspiration from her personal journey living with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. Through the use of zero-waste, upcycling and reconstruction techniques, she pieces together secondhand clothing, knitwear and suits, and industry surplus, damaged textiles and yarns in a textured contrasting palette of yellow and black, symbolizing the coexistence of hyperactivity in a world of ‘normal’ people. Psy’s design philosophy is to always find beauty in things that are odd and imperfect. She holds a Higher Diploma in Fashion Design Menswear from Hong Kong Design Institute and is currently pursuing a BA in Fashion and Textiles at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Lucy Saunders
Lucy’s Redress Design Award collection, ‘ShowCase2021’, brings new life to items from her childhood to form a utility-inspired unisex collection. Upcycling a range of materials given by her friends or found in her home, including tents, old sailing flags and scout flags, along with secondhand garments, Lucy utilises unique elements on the fabrics such as eyelets and rope to allow the user flexibility in how each piece is worn. She holds a BA in Fashion from Kingston School of Art, UK. INSTAGRAM
Lili Anna Sipeki
Lili’s Redress Design Award collection ‘REuniFORM’, focuses on tackling the large amount of waste that results from school uniforms. She reconstructs secondhand garments to transform them via patchworking techniques and quilting into elaborate, multi-functional and customizable high fashion garments that contradict the very notion of the uniform. Detachable pockets, frills and details increase the value and longevity of the garments. She holds a BA in Fashion Design from University of Chester and is currently pursuing a Masters in Fashion at Kingston University, UK.
Kristina Vyzaite
Kristina’s Redress Design Award collection, ‘Nerimas’, draws inspiration from the art of crochet and its significance in her memories as a symbolic centrepiece of where her family would gather to share stories in Lithuania. She upcycles hand-crocheted textiles such as tablecloths and placemats as her raw material as the stitches can be easily unraveled and threads reused along with deadstock fabrics which are naturally hand-dyed from home grown plants. Kristina aims to promote longevity in her designs by educating consumers on repair techniques and via her concept of ‘generational threads’, passing emotive materials to new generations. She studied fashion design at Vilnius Academy of Arts in Lithuania and holds an MA Fashion from Kingston School of Arts, UK.
Jessica Chang
Jessica’s Redress Design Award collection, ‘The Wall’, explores the different forms of walls that form protection or barriers, from those existing in nature, to man-made architecture and emotional walls we built to protect our hearts. Jessica upcycles industry surplus textiles and secondhand clothing into garments, adding breathable window detailing, with the aim to reduce the frequency of garment washing. She holds a BA in Fashion Design from The New School Parsons, USA. INSTAGRAM
Friederike Snelting
For her Redress Design Award collection, ‘RE.SKI’, Friederike takes aesthetic inspiration from the shape and structure of the inflated packaging fillers she designed after a research project on packaging alternatives to reduce waste. She creates functional winter clothing from upcycled production surplus and adds features such as quilting, along with oversized fits and elasticized waistbands to prolong the lifecycle of the garments with the wearer as their body changes. She holds a BA (Hons) in Fashion Design from University of Applied Science (HTW Berlin), Germany and an MA Fashion Design Technology Menswear from London College of Fashion, UK. INSTAGRAM
Tulika Ranjan
Tulika aims to provoke conversation about mental health through her Redress Design Award collection, ‘Just an Outlier’. She celebrates rebels with a cause, who don’t conform to the fabric of society and their grit that can lead to them being propellers of systemic change. With a focus on upcycling and zero-waste design techniques, Tulika sources undyed fabrics to ensure no trace of chemicals and upcycles them taking inspiration, both aesthetically and metaphorically from the Rorschach test, applying hand screen printing, inkblots and applique. She holds a BDes in Fashion Design from National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi, India. INSTAGRAM
Liu Feng
Feng’s Redress Design Award collection, ‘Left-behind Children’, is inspired by the stories of the young victims of a huge social issue in China, whose parents are forced to leave their home villages – and their children – behind to seek employment in major urban centres. Feng’s collection upcycles predominantly denim deadstock fabric selected for its prolificacy, which she trims with ‘left-behind children’s’ secondhand clothes. She plays with layering and structural elements to represent the notion of warm hugs that these children so need from their parents. She holds a BA in Apparel Design (Womenswear) from Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, and is currently pursuing an MA in Pattern and Garment Technology from London College of Fashion. INSTAGRAM
Isabella Li Kostrzewa
Isabella’s Redress Design Award collection, ‘Everything Bad I’ve Ever Done’, started from a challenge they gave themselves during Covid-19 lockdown to create a truly local collection sourced within 30 miles of their hometown in rural Michigan. Inspired by the visual aesthetic of the late 60s/early 70s and second wave feminism and counterculture, Isabella combines traditional feminine handiwork with a hard edge, utilitarian power twist. They apply zero-waste pattern techniques on secondhand linen curtains, tablecloths and napkins, creating boxy, fluid silhouettes made for multipurpose and gender free use allowing for maximum wearer flexibility. They are pursuing a Fashion Design (BFA) from Parsons School of Design, USA, and are exploring sustainable expression for all genders with their brand ISABOKO. INSTAGRAM
Jin Pei-Wen
Pei-Wen was inspired by the multiple patterns created by the polygons in a tangram puzzle to create geometric zero-waste patterns for her Redress Design Award collection, ‘Tangram Club’. Upcycled from sample manufacturing waste, the result is a feminine, voluminous collection made for multiple body types with multi-wearing options. Pei-Wen designs the collection with disassembly in mind for the end-of-life to further extend the life of the textiles through assembly into a new style. She is currently pursuing an MA in Fashion Design at Shih Chien University, Taiwan. INSTAGRAM