Reflecting on the results of this year’s Redress Design Awards, the NGO’s founder Christina Dean comments on the state of fashion consumerism in Hong Kong.
This year’s Redress Design Awards, which took place at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on September 7th, was a grand sight to behold. With an ambitious fashion show, exhibiting the works from young and bold fashion designers around the world (who had merely months to formulate sustainable collections), the event, once again, reminded the (at times) sanctimonious Hong Kongers about the appeal eco-conscious clothes can have.
This year’s winner, German designer Nils Hauser, took home a development fund of 50,000 HKD and an exclusive opportunity to collaborate with Timberland on a sustainable project.
The winner Nils Hauser was comprehensive in his sustainable techniques. The collection was very commercial and suitable for Timberland. His design aesthetic, story and academic knowledge were strong. Hauser understands circularity, materials, process, construction, and durability and sourcing. That’s why he won. With a different set of judges, there would have been a different winner.
There’s a huge amount of innovation – digital technology to empower the circular economy (rental and resale platforms, etc.). Unfortunately, the recycling technology is a bit underdeveloped and needs to be scaled up. But I would like to bet my bottom dollar that laboratories are searching for the gold rush that will be the future of textile recycling. We need a lot of cash in this to come now. We’re at a good point with a lot of startups that are ready to be scaled up, but we need to get the cash quickly. You may have seen that 20 to 30 billion USD investment is needed every year to step-change sustainability in the fashion industry. Investors are too slow to put their hands in the pocket.
Hong Kong is known as a fashion capital in terms of high consumption and waste. Because Hong Kongers love shopping and have small wardrobes, they tend to pass on their clothes way too soon. We’re not seeing enough secondhand shops, even though that’s changing.
The problem is that some brands have been called out for greenwashing, and younger generations of shoppers don’t trust them anymore. Sometimes that’s okay, sometimes it’s not. I can say with my hand on my heart, that I know that even these brands are working incredibly hard to improve their products. But because this topic is so complicated, and not everything can be measured or demonstrated, brands immediately get smacked around the face. I feel like it comes from an angry and ill-informed place. I wish greenwashing wasn’t such a big, negative and angry scene, because it stops brands from talking about it.
Fashion is a two-way street. You should buy from brands you trust and support products that are labelled in a way that they have a lower environmental impact. I think the consumers need to wake up and smell the coffee – they’re part of this problem as well. There’s no point in them pointing their fingers at the brands. We are all in it together, so the relationship that we have with fashion needs to change.
I can say that, in my experience, ever since many of the luxury brands have banned real fur, the waste stream has gone up 1000s. Rightfully from an animal rights perspective, fur is being considered increasingly bad. But there is a lot of waste. So, do we just go and incinerate this or use it? And in super cold countries, it’s better to use these materials instead of burning them.
Consumers expect the brands to be more responsible, and the bar for the brands’ behaviour has risen. Companies need to be accountable and not just nonprofits need to be battling away corporations – businesses that have the power to do enormous good. We need new legislation, but the problem is, that trying to legislate the fashion industry is like playing Whack a Mole because you legislate one area, they move to a different one.
Journalist, writer, reader, talker and, sometimes, eater, Gennady is the only fashion writer with a degree in Chemical Engineering in his building – a title that he wears with, perhaps, too much pride. ..Read More
Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest updates.
Thank you for your subscription.
