Circular Fashion Innovators Combatting Global Waste
By Jo Lorenz
The Redress Design Award have announced this year’s winners, signalling a new era of conscious fashion designers ready to tackle the worsening global waste crisis.
Conscious designers that focus on responsible design and re-manufacturing from upcycled materials: welcome to the future of design.
Environmental charity, Redress, has concluded it’s tenth year of the Redress Design Awards — the world’s largest sustainable fashion design competition — spotlighting bold, new, sustainable designers and propelling them to the forefront to offset the fashion industry’s continued contribution to global waste.
Fashion’s waste is a significant challenge. The industry is estimated to generate 92 million tonnes of textile waste annually across our globe. Yet with COVID-19 these alarming figures are set to increase, with 60 percent of textile and clothing companies expecting their sales to drop by half due to dead-stock and cancelled orders.
This year’s innovative winners were Le Ngoc Ha Thu, from Vietnam (menswear designer) and Juliana Garcia Bello, of Argentina (womenswear designer — designs pictured above), whose collections demonstrated unique, creative and innovative solutions to reduce waste across the entire fashion supply chain.
“Fashion’s waste crisis can’t be swept under the carpet any longer,” says Christina Dean, Founder of Redress and The R Collective. “COVID-19’s retail and supply chain disruptions have stranded materials in warehouses, factories and stores globally. Now is the time to catalyse the circular economy — and this is Redress’ focus. The Redress Design Award has for 10 years educated designers about circular design. The industry must not waste the opportunities that COVID-19’s crisis is offering.”
In the weeks leading up to the live grand final the ten finalists from ten different regions successfully navigated a demanding series of virtual design and business challenges focused on real life sustainability business cases. These included using digital design and sampling software, while focusing on responsible creation and re-manufacturing, in order to construct upcycled design concepts from COVID-19-impacted garment deadstock.
Since the inaugural cycle ten years ago, education remains a key pillar of the Redress Design Awards. With the support of more than 140 universities worldwide, to date the awards have delivered sustainable and circular design training to more than 50,000 designers across the planet in multiple languages. A global and inclusive foundation for a more sustainable future.
Congratulations to the winners and finalists of the 2020 Redress Design Awards!
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