Redress Design Award 2023 winners announced, ushering in a new era for sustainable fashion
©Redress
Redress, the Hong Kong-headquartered, Asia-focused environmental NGO accelerating the change to a circular fashion industry, announced the winners of the Redress Design Award 2023. With Create Hong Kong (CreateHK) of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region as the Lead Sponsor, the world’s largest sustainable fashion design competition concluded its 13th cycle at Hong Kong’s fashion spotlight event, CENTRESTAGE*, on 7 September.
Winning First Prize, Nils Hauser from Germany gets the career-changing chance to work on a sustainable design collaboration out of VF Corporation’s Tokyo Design Collective with the Timberland® design team for the brand’s Spring 2025 apparel collection. The winner out-designed eight other emerging designer Finalists from Australia, Canada, France, Hong Kong, India, Sri Lanka, and the USA, following a gruelling nine-month educational competition that attracted applications from 46 countries and regions.
The Finalists represent a new generation of fashion designers who are designing waste out of fashion with the circular design techniques of zero-waste, upcycling, and reconstruction. They do so by exploring their local textile waste streams for their design materials, from manufacturing waste and consumer castoffs to the more imaginative reuse of turbans, tents, and bedsheets. Their bold designs and sourcing methods represent creative and innovative solutions to increase current circularity achievements, which presently see less than one percent of clothing being recycled back into clothing.
All nine of the 2023 Finalists now join the Redress Design Award Alumni Network, which consists of over 300 previous Finalists and Semi-finalists from over 40 countries and regions to benefit from Redress’ ongoing support. With diverse circular design talents and solutions, these influential fashion game-changers continue to catalyse greater industry change, whether starting their own sustainable brands, educating other designers, or working for small to large fashion brands and manufacturers.
Over the last four years, Redress Alumni have worked with American Eagle Outfitters, Harvey Nichols Hong Kong, Kipling, and Timberland®; showed at fashion weeks in Paris, Milan, Shanghai, and Shenzhen; and dressed global celebrities, including Lady Gaga, Heidi Klum, Taylor Swift, and Sunmi. Through The R Collective, the social impact business inspired into life through Redress, Alumni have also collaborated with Lane Crawford, Net-a-Porter, kapok, Haustage, UBS, and Value Retail.
