Mindful Fashion NZ Announces Circular Design Awards 2024 Finalists

Mindful Fashion NZ has announced the finalists of the Circular Design Awards 2024, the annual design competition that challenges individuals and businesses to reimagine fashion as circular, designing out waste to inspire the next generation of creatives.

The Circular Design Awards showcase innovative ways to keep materials in use with designers and creatives encouraged to use the dual lens of our unique place in the world and the circular economy.

Over the last 20 years clothing consumption has increased by 60% with items kept half as long. This ‘throw away’ culture and acute level of overconsumption means a significant increase on the volume of textile waste being sent to landfill.

Figures revealed in Mindful Fashion’s hard-hitting report ‘Threads of Tomorrow’ – Crafting the Future of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Fashion, Clothing and Textiles Landscape released in May identify that shockingly 143 tonnes of clothing waste go to landfill daily in Aotearoa. That’s a whopping 52,000 tonnes every year.

Threads of Tomorrow presented the case for change and a bold vision for the New Zealand Fashion, Clothing, and Textile Industry (NZFCTI) to reach a thriving and circular future.

Jacinta FitzGerald, Mindful Fashion Chief Executive says, “Around the world, millions of tonnes of clothes are produced, worn, and thrown away each year, with more than 85% ending up in landfill.

“In Aotearoa New Zealand, approximately 74,000 tonnes of clothing are consumed each year. Auckland's Redvale landfill alone receives 70 trucks of clothing waste each week. We need to focus on collective solutions to do better.

“As our industry report Threads of Tomorrow found, moving towards circular systems has the potential to reduce emissions by one-third, and generate social, environmental and economic value for New Zealand, and the Circular Design Awards is an avenue to explore tangible ways to do this.

“There’s a very real opportunity to create value from the large volume of textile waste in the country. Inspiring local designers to creatively reimagine textile waste, and design sustainable products for consumers, can reduce emissions and decouple industry growth from finite resource use, and our finalists this year have done an outstanding job of meeting the brief.

“This year we’ve seen some incredible concepts resulting in a high calibre of work and an increased focus on tackling industry and business waste streams. The entries that stood out treated the ‘waste’ materials as precious and created something of greater value. The material has not been treated as a limitation, but rather as a starting point for innovation.”

The Awards, delivered in partnership with the Gattung Foundation, celebrate the best innovation in sustainable fashion design, with three finalists across each of the four categories announced today. The finalists are vying for one of four top prizes, which will be announced at the Awards Gala on Wednesday 25th September in Auckland with tickets on sale now.

Award for Creative Excellence in Circular Design: Finalists

• Grant Davy: Modernising Tradition. This entry stood out due to the intentionality of the design and the full consideration of its life cycle through honouring the origin of the textiles. Subverting the traditional wedding dress through the use of obsolete undyed, raw calico previously used in museum displays, the finished garment has been constructed using couture techniques and deliberately assembled so it can be deconstructed easily into its component parts and reworked/ recycled at the end of its life.
• Natalia Bertolo: Twist, Tuck and Roll. Presents a novel approach to technology, and tackles waste textiles that are unusable for traditional upcycling due to stains, wear or fading. Discarded textiles are reworked into versatile yarns for macramé, knitwear, and intrecciato, while ‘merch’ is used to communicate the powerful message of overconsumption juxtaposed with an occasionwear outfit.
• Jacqueline Tsang: Fabric has Memory. This entry honours the designers’ ancestors and draws inspiration from the nostalgia of places, customs and memories of her past. Utilising obsolete coffee sacks sourced from local cafes, damaged kimonos and vintage tapestries, the design elevates the materials through use of craft techniques and creative design elements and weaves them together with the designer’s story of connection to place, resulting in a high fashion luxury outfit showing a high level of attention to detail and construction.

Award for Excellence from a Rising Talent in Circular Design: Finalists

• Nethasha Abeysinghe: Visualise This. Inspired by the amount of waste generated from creating toile garments at university, this design sets out to repurpose this material into a new, cherished outfit that challenges the notion of wearability. With a modern silhouette the design incorporates the concept of longevity by allowing the garment to be easily renewed through addition of new fabric pieces as wadding. This design challenges convention while making the issue of waste visible highlighting the need to address consumption of materials and change the way clothing is designed, used and circulated.
• Salma Ibrahim-Jerrywo: Made to Last. This conceptual and unconventional menswear design impressed the judges with its use of post-digital additives and waste from the film industry. Addressing the challenge of synthetic materials head on, the designer uses laser cutting and finishing techniques to give the garment longevity to match the lifespan of the material. The designer challenged himself to create a refreshing look that could be considered timeless in the sense that it is a style that could be worn in the future years.
• Ella Fidler: Scrap Yarn. Careful consideration was given to the choice of waste material used in this outfit, to ensure that it was also recyclable at the end of its new life. The feature item is a vest made from pre-production fabric waste, where a new yarn has been created from scraps from the garment cutting process and constructed into a tailored vest, leaving raw edges that illustrate the origins of the material while elevating the design through choice of design elements to create a high fashion garment.

Award for Material innovation: Finalists

• Stefanie Borkowski: Port in a Storm. This design harmonises technical design with streetwear aesthetics to create a functional garment that goes beyond style, with practical features that give the garment longevity. This designer looked to her local region to solve a waste problem and has repurposed a damaged vehicle cover from a local port that was no longer suitable for its intended purpose. The designers use of zero waste pattern techniques, utilisation of hardware from the original item and incorporation of adjustability impressed the judges.
• Zehyi Ruan: Textural Study. This design fuses digital and craft technology to explore adding value to a range of pre-consumer waste materials, including misprinted and faulty garments and print samples, upholstery fabric samples and wool. Through use of felting, the designer explores creating new material through upcycling of wool waste, which is crafted into a multifunctional and modular tailored jacket. The judges were impressed with the use of digital technology to create zero waste during the design and production process of the outfit, and the experimentation of innovative material techniques.
• Sue Prescott: Southerly Change. Presents contemporary raincoat crafted from 95% locally sourced sail-cloth waste, designed to offer protection from Wellington's famously unpredictable weather. Infused with tales of maritime adventures, this garment ages gracefully as its fabric transitions to a kinder, land-based life. Making use of two old racing spinnakers that had reached the end of their viable life as sails, the design confronts the ubiquitous nature of the raincoat and creates a protective garment that speaks to the materials original life while offering protection and joy through use of colour and silhouette.

Circular Business Innovation Award sponsored by Trade Me Finalists (new category in 2024):

Recognising the pivotal role of business in transforming our economy to a low carbon and circular system, the Circular Business Innovation Award is a new category which celebrates businesses that are working to embed circular systems and principles into their business operations and value propositions.

MFNZ challenged businesses to demonstrate how they had redesigned a product, service, or process, or designed out a waste stream, and worked to ensure the materials and resources are kept in circulation.

• Offcut: Offcut Caps. An innovative example of creative upcycling, turning all kinds of industry waste into marketable, useful products. Judges were impressed by Offcut’s collaborative approach to sourcing waste. From sun umbrellas to coffee bags, Offcut is turning landfill-bound materials into beautiful, desirable products and proving that waste can be a valuable resource.
• Untouched World: Rubbish Socks. This initiative stood out to judges as truly embodying the pillars of circularity: working with renewable fibres, minimising waste, keeping materials in circulation at high value through recycling to produce a new material and desirable product that truly celebrates the unique beauty of recycled yarn. Data provided shows a 99% textile waste recycling rate.
• Standard Issue: Care for Life. The middle pillars of circularity: reuse and repair are sometimes overlooked but are so important to minimising excess and teaching consumers that high quality products are also repairable. Care for life does an excellent job of encouraging its customers to buy once, buy well! From repair services to redistribution and end-of-life recycling, they're extending the lifespan of their products in a truly impactful way.

“The need for foundational, sustainable practices in clothing design is apparent now more than ever. The Circular Design Awards educates the next generation of designers to reimagine fashion as waste-free and showcases the best-practice initiatives from New Zealand businesses who are leading the charge,” says Jacinta Fitzgerald.

Mindful Fashion is using initiatives like the Circular Design Awards to champion the local industry towards a circular future, by following the four action areas and fifteen corresponding recommendations identified in the Threads of Tomorrow report that provide a clear roadmap for the industry.

The New Zealand Fashion, Clothing and Textile Industry (NZFCTI) contributes $7.8 billion annually to the economy and adds 1.9% to the GDP, with over 76,000 people employed in the sector.

“We’re determined to continue to build a platform that showcases innovative solutions, raises awareness of textile waste and pollution issues, and influences change towards circular fashion in Aotearoa. Mindful Fashion NZ continues to call on government to work with us to support actionable change and scale the recommendations in the report.”

Finalists in the Mindful Fashion NZ Circular Design Awards will vie for a $50k prize pool with four Supreme Awards to be announced at a Gala event on 25th September at the Sapphire Room in Ponsonby Central. Tickets are available here: https://events.humanitix.com/mindful-fashion-circular-design-award-gala-2024

Note:

The Circular Design Award 2024 judging panel includes:

• Dame Theresa Gattung – Businesswoman and Entrepreneur
• Marilou Dadat – Creative Director Kowtow Clothing
• Lucianne Tonti – International Journalist and author
• Dan Ahwa – Creative Director NZ Herald Viva
• Sandra Tupu – Founder Flying Fox Clothing
• Dylan Mulder – Designer Mulder
• Deanna Didovich – Creative Director Ruby
• Natasha Ovely – Founder and Designer, Starving Artist Fund
• Sue Anderson – Head of Product at Trade Me
• James Griffin – Circular Economy lead at Sustainable Business Network

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