Hong Kong’s ‘Eco Chic’ Challenge
Budding local designers rise to the challenge of creating ready-to-wear fashion with low-environmental impact, ahead of the EcoChic Design Awards 2012.
The EcoChic Design Award Hong Kong 2012, launched by Hong Kong NGO Redress, is keeping the promise of sustainable fashion design competition alive, challenging emerging Hong Kong designers to create mainstream fashion with minimal waste.
The competition provides designers with sustainable design tools over five months of design and theory, preceding a grand, final runway show at Hong Kong Fashion Week 2012 in July. The winners will go on to design a sustainable collection for Esprit made using recycled textiles and will get to go on an educational fashion tour of London, sponsored by the British Council.
“Everyone is a fashion consumer, yet few people consider the underlying environmental impacts embedded into our clothing, including textile waste, water pollution, chemical and energy use,” says Christina Dean, founder of Redress.
A handful of pioneering international designers, such as Stella McCartney, have already forged the way forward in “eco chic.”
Judges include Barney Cheng (Hong Kong-based designer), Anderson Lee (executive director of the Sustainable Fashion Business Consortium), Do Do Yeung (publisher of ELLE Hong Kong), Margaret Kutt (Manager for Sustainable Projects at Esprit) and Orsola de Castro (co-founder of From Somewhere and Estethica fashion brands).
The three awards to be given are: