The EcoChic Design Award is a sustainable fashion design competition inspiring emerging fashion designers to create mainstream clothing with minimal textile waste. Designers are educated with the theory and techniques to enable them to create desirable sustainable clothing via zero-waste, up-cycling and reconstruction sustainable design techniques.
The 2015/16 competition cycle is open to fashion designers with less than three years’ professional experience and fashion design students living in any Asian or European country*. A total of ten finalists from across the regions will be selected to come to Hong Kong in January 2016 to showcase their minimal waste collections at HKTDC Hong Kong Fashion Week where career-changing prizes will be awarded.
To learn more and to apply go to their website: The EcoChic Design Award
Location: living in any Asian or European country at the time of the application (valid ID/passport/visa/resident permit).
Experience/age: fashion designer with less than three years’ professional fashion design experience or a fashion design student studying in any year at an educational institute in any Asian or European country at the time of the application.
Entry: Free
Deadline: August 15 2015
Prizes: 10 finalists from across the regions will be selected to come to Hong Kong in January 2016 to showcase their minimal waste collections at HKTDC Hong Kong Fashion Week where career-changing prizes will be awarded.
What is the competition design brief?
You are challenged to design a sustainable womenswear collection that will redress the way contemporary, fashion-loving women see their outer and inner reflection. You designs must inspire your muse to step out into the world confidently wearing her sustainability values stylishly on her sleeve.
You are designing for…
- A dynamic, contemporary woman aged 25-40 with a sophisticated appreciation of style and modern Chinese aesthetics.
- She enjoys considered and conscious luxury, where focus is given to quality, tailoring and craftsmanship.
- She is conscientious about wastefulness in modern living and wishes to be clothed in ways that reflect her style as much as her sentiments about sustainability.
Your sustainable designs must…
- Cut waste out of fashion by using one or more of the sustainable design techniques of zero-waste, up-cycling and reconstruction.
- Take the deeper cut by using textile waste for the up-cycling and reconstruction outfits.
- Show wider opportunities through being reproducible and scalable.
If you want to redress women in style and sustainability, you must…
- Design to win. Create three ready-to-wear outfit sketches (not complete outfits) for the open application. If you make the cut to become one of the ten finalists, you must make these three ready-to-wear sketches into complete outfits. To test you further, you must then create two additional complete ready-to-wear outfits and one couture outfit in order to make your mark on the runway.
- Impress the judges. Your designs will be scored in three categories based on the creative design brief (in the open application and semi-final) and four categories (in the Grand Final) each with equal weighting according to creativity and originality, sustainability, marketability and workmanship (final only).
