Redress Design Award 2022 Winners Announced
©Redress Design Award
The winner of sustainable fashion design competition Redress Design Award has been unveiled at its 2022 Grand Final Fashion Presentation in Hong Kong. In an announcement made by Redress and VF Corporation, the NGO’s four year collaborator, Federico Badini Confalonieri was revealed to be the recipient of the award.
©Redress Design Award
“This prize is about more than winning a competition,” said the First Prize winner, Federico Badini Confalonieri from Italy, who out-designed eight other finalist designers from Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, India, Spain, Chile and Brazil. “It will give me even more energy and determination to work towards building together a more sustainable fashion industry. I am humbled that the jury selected me among such skilled designers! We sustainable designers may have competed, but the reality is that collaboration creates greater fashion. To partner with one of the world’s most iconic brands, Timberland, is a huge opportunity for me, and I look forward to creating a positive and powerful project together!”
©Redress Design Award
With a focus on the design stage, the competition has been inviting global emerging designers to create by using circular design techniques, including zero-waste, upcycling, and reconstruction. This cycle’s finalists’ looks also drew from various textile waste streams, including industry excess end-of-rolls, cut-and-sew waste, yarn waste, and consumers’ cast-off clothing, turning unwanted materials into eye-catching fashion from casual to couture.
The fashion industry, in its current form, is unsustainable, and reducing waste is critical. Since 2002, global clothing production has more than doubled, the average consumer buys 60% more, and each garment is kept for half as long. Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned, and just 1% of clothing is recycled back into clothing, with 73% of clothing going to landfill. On fashion’s current trajectory, compared to 2017, textile waste is estimated to increase by 60% by 2030 and the fashion industry is projected to use 25% of the world’s carbon budget by 2050.
©Redress Design Award
“The whole fashion industry and academia must take educating designers seriously. It’s thought that 80% of a product's environmental impact is decided at the design stage," said Christina Dean, Founder of Redress. “From our base in Hong Kong, we’ve educated in several different languages thousands of designers globally, whom we consider more as activists than artists. As we look forward, we increasingly look to double up on efforts to access more Asian countries, which are home to the world’s greatest apparel production bases and consumption markets.”
Ms Jersey Yuen, Assistant Head of CreateHK, shared, “I am grateful for Redress’ dedication to creating a unique platform to promote sustainable design theories and techniques among up-and-coming fashion designers around the world through the sustainable fashion design competition.”
©Redress Design Award
Up next, the 2022 finalists’ and selected alumni brands’ collections will be displayed at Hong Kong’s ArtisTree in Taikoo Place with free admission from 9 to 16 September (11am–7pm daily). At the showcase, a key interactive and consumer-focused tech feature will allow guests to virtually try on the displayed outfits using augmented reality (AR) filters on Snapchat, further educating public consumers on advances in a virtual fashion.