Hello from new Zealand :)
A while a go while I was doing the usual stalking my friends on Facebook, I noticed a feed advertising for a competition that was based on eco-fashion right here in Hong Kong.
Since my interest has always leant towards Eco-fashion and sustainability, I was curious.
After I read EcoChic Design Award principles and what their competition was all about I attended their casual meeting where they explained further about their point of view towards sustainable fashion and what they wished us to do. After a few cupcakes I decided to go ahead and join the competition. My main reasons for joining the competition were firstly that I wanted to voice my opinion and tell the world that there is a bunch of us eco-designers in Hong Kong who do care about the environment. Secondly, I hoped that the competition would be a showcase platform and lead to more sustainable fabric sources to support this movement. And finally I wanted to meet fellow likeminded eco-designers.
I worked very hard for the next couple of weeks to find out the meaning of sustainable fashion and what should be classified as eco-friendly. Natural fibres? Natural dye? But what about the design - Did you know that 15% of the fabric is wasted during the cutting process? So if you’re using Bamboo Jersey, but there’re still 15% of fabric waste during the cutting process would that make your dress eco-friendly? What if we can challenge our minds further and explore possibility of zero-waste design?
I’ve heard of this zero-waste theory before but I had never tried it myself. Normally in my studio I would just collect scraps to make accessories. That is my way of minimising waste while created wearable accessories. I certainly wanted to know more. Typing in “Zero-waste design” on Google gave me a few examples and few designers who are already experts in this field. (If you would like to know more I suggest you look up work by Holly McQuillan, Mark Liu and Timo Rissanen). I was inspired to do the same. Cutting waste at the first stage of production means that you have already done your bit for the environment rather than sitting around and hoping for the customer to do the right thing by reusing and recycling the clothes.
I do love a good challenge and this is something I would encourage all designers and design students to do. If we can all push our limits a little more, go outside of our comfort zone, create designs that are simply zero-waste and on top of all of that we can choose to use sustainable fabric with low impact dye, imagine how great that would that be for the environment and not to mention our fabric buying budget?
My collection for EcoChic Award was based on the above vision, exploring zero-waste, making clothes from left over scraps and using recycled vintage clothing to create new designs for everyday wear. I was lucky enough to get into the semi-final round. There were so many amazing designs there and I was glad to be a part of the competition.
To write all about the entire experience all in one day, would be too long so I have decided to do a series of posts on it to share my experiences with all the eco-designers out there and hopefully it will be useful for future designers :) .
Stay tuned for the next post!
Zero-waste design dress for Eco-Chic Award
My work was feature in Butterboom.com for EcoChic people’s Award :)
Vote for me please!