Educating designers to cut waste out of fashion

Dear Valued Supporters,

I am writing to invite you to join us for the Grand Final of the EcoChic Design Award 2017 next Thursday 7 September, 5pm in Hong Kong.

This is a milestone event in our competition cycle, where our 10 finalists - the brightest stars of our competition selected from entries received from 46 countries - will present their waste reducing collections on the runway at Hong Kong Fashion Week CENTRESTAGE to an international audience.

Your financial support has helped us get this far and we would love you to join us and celebrate as we present this new generation of sustainable designers to the world and announce our winners! Please RSVP to info@ecochicdesignaward.com to join in person and for those not in Hong Kong - please tune in to our Facebook page to watch our livestream.

The EcoChic Design Award: September 7th 2017 - 5pm HKT/ 10am BST / 5am EDT 

Arriving in Hong Kong today, our talented finalists are embarking on an inspiring eight day journey of challenges to explore issues of uniform waste, customer care and design to manufacturing - as well as model fittings, rehearsals and the all-important pre-judging, all pushing their understanding of the issues of circular economy and sustainable fashion futures.

And they are not the only ones learning - so far through our programme we have educated almost 800 emerging designers in person and many more thousands online. Once the Grand Final is over, we push full throttle into the next cycle where we are expanding the competition to a truly global reach to satisfy a growing demand. 

Please keep supporting our critical work in shifting the fashion industry to a less polluting, more sustainable one. Did you know you can set up a monthly donation via global giving? Click donate now on our programme page to find out more.

Best wishes,

Hannah Lane

Links:

• Take a look at our 2017 finalists collections here

Dear Donors,

Since my last mail we have been busy at Redress HQ as we continue to educate emerging fashion designers, in what we know is an act of environmental activism.

In April, the doors closed on the first phase of the EcoChic Design Award 2017. I’m pleased to share another record-breaking cycle, with hundreds of applications hailing from 46 countries across our regions of Asia, Europe and the USA! This huge groundswell in applications from around the world – as well as the 4,000+ visits to our LEARN platform during the open application phase alone – show that we’re bridging the gap to provide education.

Following the closing date, our expert regional judging panels had the tough job of whittling down our applicants to 24 semi-finalists, who we announced earlier this month here. This energetic and eclectic group have one common objective – to prove that we can cut the waste out of fashion.

And today, we are just a few days away from announcing the 10 finalists, who will bring their waste reducing collections – and their vision to change the fashion industry - to Hong Kong fashion week this September. Do keep posted at our Facebook page to see who they are.

Driving change into industry

In my last update, I told you about the new social impact business, called BYT, that was born from Redress to prove that fashion can be a force for good. BYT will welcome The EcoChic Design Award 2017 cycle winner into its design team for an educational experience to create an up-cycled collection for retail on BYT’s ecommerce platform and on Lane Crawford. BYT is co-founded by Redress’ Founder Christina Dean and Redress’ ex COO, Michelle Bang and is a separate entity from Redress. BYT is itself in a competition too; having reached the global finals of the Chivas Venture Fund. Find out more about helping BYT win funds by voting for them here. BYT will be donating 10% of profits back to support the work of Redress, so please support them too!

Finally, as we move rapidly towards EcoChic Design Award 2018 cycle and our fundraising efforts increase, we are reminded that we could not achieve all we are this without your support. Please continue to give where you can. We have big plans to extend our educational reach globally for the 2018 cycle, along with expanding our Educator Packs to cover more diverse and much-needed subjects. Every little truly helps to help us reach our goals.

Many thanks again!

Best wishes,

Hannah

Links:

• The EcoChic Design Award 2017 semi-finalists