The EcoChic Design Award China 2012 was introduced by Redress in April this year to inspire China’s emerging fashion designers to create mainstream clothing with minimized environmental impacts.

It is China’s first dedicated sustainable fashion design competition focusing on textile waste reduction. Redress and their pioneering local fashion partners, with the support of Esprit, are educating and enabling emerging Chinese fashion designers to create a more sustainable fashion industry for China, the world’s major garment and textile manufacturer.

“The fashion industry creates excessive amounts of waste that causes environmental pollution. With China manufacturing approximately 40 percent of the world’s textiles and 30 percent of the world’s apparel, these negative impacts are all too close to home,” said Dr. Christina Dean, Founder of Redress. “Designers are thought to influence an estimated 80 percent of the environmental impact of a product and so designers must be part of the solution. Chinese designers are in a powerful position to change the fashion industry from the inside.”

Redress