waikit

Redress launches The EcoChic Design Award China 2012, a sustainable fashion design competition challenging emerging fashion designers to create mainstream fashion with minimal textile waste. The competition provides designers with the sustainable design tools to take them through six months of design and theory that culminates at a grand final runway show at Shanghai Fashion Week in October. Twelve grand finalists will then compete for the chance to design a sustainable collection for retailer Esprit, visit John Hardy’s sustainable Bali-based production facilities and visit Hong Kong Fashion Week.

“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. Through The EcoChic Design Award, we are ultimately addressing these negative environmental outcomes by going to the source of the fashion industry to educate emerging fashion designers,� said Christina Dean, founder of Redress.

The award is supported by a number of high profile personalities from the fashion industry, including award ambassador Zhu Zhu
“The fashion industry is loved for its creativity and expression but it is one of the world’s most polluting industries. With China being the garment manufacturing hub of the world, the negative impacts arising from the fashion industry are close to home. Few people realize that designers influence an estimated 80 percent of the environmental impact of a product. It is crucial to encourage and educate emerging fashion designers about their important role in making tomorrow’s fashion industry more sustainable’ said model and actress Zhu Zhu (朱�)

More broadly, the competition raises industry and consumer awareness about the negative environmental impacts caused by waste from the fashion industry. It is estimated that 10 million tonnes of textiles are wasted annually in Europe and America alone1 and that 15 percent of textiles are wasted in the manufacturing process2. With China being the largest exporter of apparel and textiles in the world, responsible for making approximately 40 percent of the world’s textiles3 and 30 percent of apparel exports4; figures for China’s textile waste appear very high.

Calling local designers to break the boundaries of conventional fashion
The EcoChic Design Award puts the spotlight onto China’s emerging sustainable fashion design talent, creating a platform to expand Asia’s sustainable fashion landscape. The competition is open to fashion design students and designers with up to five years industry experience residing in China.

Visit the official site of EcoChic Design Award China

Taking recycled advertising banners as the project’s starting point; the designers gave a unique three-dimensionality to the material by cutting it into small pieces and combining them together to create interesting volumes of light and texture.

The designers focused their efforts by creating each light shade individually and specifically for each stand, selecting the right banners, sorting out matching colors and sewing each patch by hand to build the perfect irregular shape.

As the banners are printed in one side only, the lamps appear to be white and pale when switched off, but the plain appearance radically changes once the lamps are lighted on and the colors emerge from the inside.

Due to the properties of the material, the light is smoothly diffused through the fabric creating a balloon of multi-colored light, but at the same time, the small banner swatches sewed together create a surface filled with holes from where the light escapes and scatters the surrounding environment with a vivid luminous pattern.

Designed by Chan Wan Ki, Kay / Chen Siu Wa, Shai Chai / Suen Ka Hei, Catherine

“The designers find inspiration in traditional paper cutting, or in Tang (dynasty) paintings representing opulent women. Every model in the future has to have a good potential in China.”

Read the article at NY Daily News

DemoHour is a crowdfunding platform to realize the dreams of creative Chinese people.

DemoHour was founded in May 2011 in Beijing. The founders believe that there are many creative people in China, but most of them lack  financial support and do not have access to publication and distribution channels.

DemoHour provides everyone the opportunity to present their creative ideas and to support other people’s ideas, whether is a product design, independent film, live performance or any other creative initiative.

Visit the official site of DemoHour

Xue Meng is a Dahlian born industrial designer, graduated from the Tsinghua University, who currently works at Idea International Japan. Before he worked at ZTE,where he designed the successful mobile phone ZTE C150 model.

Visit the portfolio of Xue Meng