Redress, an environmental NGO in Asia, is organizing the Redress Design Award 2024, a global competition for sustainable fashion design. The competition, supported by Create Hong Kong, is aimed at promoting circular fashion and educating designers and consumers. The competition, which is open to emerging designers globally, encourages them to showcase their circular and sustainable fashion collections. Redress, led by Dr. Christina Dean, emphasizes the urgent need to accelerate circular fashion to combat pollution and waste. The competition, which will close on 15 March 2024, aims to collaborate with bold fashion brands and talented designers to create the fashion industry of the future.
Mr. Victor Tsang, Head of Create Hong Kong, remarked that, “the Redress Design Award plays a pivotal role in bringing design elites from around the world to gather and conduct exchanges. The HKSAR government is pleased to support the competition with a view to reinforcing Hong Kong as the East-meets-West centre for international cultural exchange.”
Tommy Hilfiger, which is owned by PVH Corp. [NYSE: PVH], is pleased to enter a new partnership to nurture emerging talent. The Redress Design Award 2024 First Prize winner will join the Tommy Hilfiger design team to work on a sustainable design project for retail, gaining valuable industry experience, and building on their knowledge of sustainable fashion.
Creating fashion that “Wastes Nothing and Welcomes All” is part of Tommy Hilfiger’s DNA and reflects on the brand’s decades-long track record and commitment to making fashion more sustainable and inclusive. Tommy Hilfiger is exploring new, circular materials and manufacturing methods like creating quality pieces from textile waste, while operating with sensitivity to planetary boundaries. The brand is also working to make the fashion industry more accessible to underrepresented communities through programmes and partnerships and creating inclusive products that work for every Tommy Hilfiger fan.
Education needed for a circular fashion system
Fashion’s current unsustainable linear system of ‘take, make and waste’ is wasteful and polluting. Around 100 billion apparel items are produced per year, approximately doubling since 2006, and the majority of this is landfilled or burned within one year of production. An estimated 92 million tons of textile waste is created annually from the fashion industry, with the equivalent of one rubbish truck of textiles landfilled or burned every second.
It is estimated that 80% of a product’s environmental impact is determined at the design stage, where decisions from everything from materials, trims, repairability, longevity to recyclability are laid down.
Fashion designers looking to enhance their expertise in circular fashion design are encouraged to enrol in the free, online Redress Circular Fashion Design Course, delivered by leading industry experts, to gain an edge in the fast-changing fashion industry. The newest module ‘Design for Recyclability’, launching on 23 January and featuring insights from Jessica Wei, Senior Director of Sustainability at Tommy Hilfiger Asia Pacific, offers a unique opportunity to explore circular business models and learn from professionals embracing recyclability – and will be exclusively available to Redress Design Award applicants through 15 March.
With over 170 university partners worldwide, Redress is committed to equipping the next generation of fashion professionals with the necessary knowledge and tools to support, and succeed in, a fashion industry transitioning toward circularity. The Redress Academy, a free online learning platform, has benefited more than 120,000 students, designers, and industry professionals.
Applications for the Redress Design Award 2024 are now open worldwide until 15 March. Emerging designers can visit www.redressdesignaward.com for complete guidelines and submission details.
