Educating designers to cut waste out of fashion

Dear valued donors,

This year Redress, like so many others, have had to adapt and change quickly - founder Christina Dean shared, “What a year! With the global pandemic disrupting our plans for the 10th cycle of the Redress Design Award, and at the same time underlining the urgency for our work to transform fashion’s waste, our activities evolved to take place virtually, joining our finalists and audiences from their homes across the world to highlight the crisis. And a crisis is the perfect opportunity for our designers to innovate and disrupt fashion industry practices that are wreaking havoc on our planet's resources.”

In the weeks leading up to the Redress Design Award 2020 Grand Final this September, our 10 finalists participated in a series of educational expert talks, and virtual challenges to learn about all aspects of the sustainable fashion industry, gaining real industry insights and exclusive access to leading experts.

Redress hosted the Digital Up-Cycling Challenge in partnership with TAL Apparel and Browzwear, where finalists were tasked to use digital design and sampling to demonstrate their up-cycling skills using Browzwear’s software to provide design-manufacturing solutions to address TAL’s Covid-19 related deadstock.

For the Made for Change Challenge finalists were asked to develop a sustainable and scalable business concept which brought VF Corporation’s brand Timberland’s purpose of life through responsible design and re-manufacturing of deadstock fabric.

The Grand Final Show, saw the announcement of the womenswear (Juliana Garcia Bello from Argentina) and first standalone menswear first prizes and the menswear first prize (Le Ngoc Ha Thu from Vietnam). Explore our winners collections here.

The Redress Team are now working on finishing up the 10^th cycle, with finalists’ exhibitions in Hong Kong and Amsterdam for Fashion for Good. We are gearing up for the 11^th cycle launching in January 2021 – ready to educate and inspire emerging sustainable fashion designers.

Fashion’s waste is a significant challenge. The industry is estimated to generate 92 million tons of textile waste1 annually worldwide. Covid-19 is set to increase this; 60% of textile and clothing companies expect their sales to drop by half in the short term2 and with this leading to deadstock and cancelled orders. The Redress Design Award 2020 finalists’ collections demonstrate numerous solutions to reduce waste throughout the entire fashion supply chain and also across industries. The appetite for change and collaboration has never been greater.

Your continued support enables us to continue generating meaningful impact and we thank you! Donate here 

If you’d like to find out more please refer to these quick links:

• The Redress Design Award Website
• Haven’t seen our docu-series following the finalists’ journey to the Grand Final? Check out Frontline Fashion Unstitched    
• Watch the Grand Final Show
• Read Volume 7 of the Redress Design Award Magazine

Best wishes,

Links:

• Watch the Redress Design Award 2020 Grand Final

Dear valued donors, 

We are thrilled to bring you the latest news from the Redress Design Award, our 2020 finalists have been announced! This cycle we have two prize categories for the first time in the competition's history enabling us to reach a wider scope of fashion disciplines with our education around sustainable fashion.

The 10 Redress Design Award 2020 finalists hail from across the globe and have triumphed over other talented hopefuls applying from 46 regions with innovative, textile waste-reducing designs. They will battle it our at the Grand Final in September 2020.

Founder and Chair of Redress, Christina Dean said, “Fashion is in crisis. COVID-19 has devastated the business, the balance sheets and is affecting creativity on the drawing board. Meanwhile, fashion’s already staggering waste rates will likely spike due to shocking retail performance and dislocated supply chains that have stranded inventory and materials globally. Only the toughest and most talented designers will survive this crisis, and those designers who can up-cycle waste materials, like our 10 Redress Design Award Finalists, are already ahead of the pack as they enter a new fashion industry.”

The 10 finalists used a combination of zero-waste, up-cycling and reconstruction design techniques, sourcing waste materials generated from all parts of the fashion supply chain and consumers. The Redress Design Award creates an international platform enabling the exchange of knowledge, experiences and ideas between emerging fashion designers from leading fashion trade countries, inspiring the next generation of industry professionals to be the positive change the fashion industry needs. In the 2020 cycle, the project aims to reach over 20,000 students and emerging designers through workshops and lectures and through our online educational platform. Your continued support means more than you could imagine for helping the difficulty of the fashion industry, any further donations would be welcomed with thanks!