The second Mindful Fashion Circular Design Awards has just announced its top finalists - get to know the designers working towards solutions for a truly sustainable fashion industry in New Zealand.
Circular solutions for textile waste are at the heart of Mindful Fashion New Zealand’s Circular Design Awards, returning after its successful debut in 2023.
The awards are spearheaded by Mindful Fashion chief executive Jacinta Fitzgerald and today marks the announcement of the finalists for 2024, culminating in an awards event on September 25 in Auckland.
“Around the world, millions of tonnes of clothes are produced, worn, and thrown away each year, with more than 85% ending up in landfills” explains Jacinta.
“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.
This year’s entries come from all over the country, undergoing rigorous judging criteria from a panel of industry professionals. As a support act to Mindful Fashion’s comprehensive Threads of Tomorrow report released in May, the awards combine real-life design solutions from a range of entrants who are at various levels of their respective design journeys. 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 more than 76,000 people employed in the sector.
“As our industry report Threads of Tomorrow found,” says Jacinta “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.”
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Advertise with NZME.The four key categories are: Creative Excellence, Rising Talent, and Material Innovation. The finalists were selected by a panel of judges - leading businesswoman and entrepreneur Dame Theresa Gattung, Kowtow creative director Marilou Dadat, Flyingfox Clothing founder, teacher and Mindful Fashion board member Sandra Tupu, industrial designer and 3D technical artist Dylan Mulder, Ruby creative director Deanna Didovich, founder and designer of Starving Artists Fund Natasha Ovley and Viva’s creative and fashion director Dan Ahwa.
“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” says Jacinta. Mindful Fashion NZ continues to call on the Government to work with us to support actionable change and scale the recommendations in the report.”
A newly introduced category for 2024, the Circular Business Innovation Award sponsored by Trade Me, has been judged separately by an equally esteemed panel of judges including acclaimed author of Sundressed and journalist for Elle Australia and the Guardian Lucianne Tonti, circular economy specialist at Sustainable Business Network James Griffin, and head of product at Trade Me Sue Anderson.
Award for Creative Excellence
These finalists were chosen for their wow factor, originality and creativity married with a resolved design solution. Their outfits are wearable, with a design aesthetic both appealing and desirable for the intended market.
Grant Davy
This entry stood out due to the intentionality of the design and the full consideration of its life cycle by 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
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.
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Advertise with NZME.Jacqueline Tsang
This entry honours the designer’s 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
These finalists were chosen for their early-stage critical thinking and a resolved design solution from an emerging design talent aged between 16-22 years-old.
Nethasha Abeysinghe
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
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 herself 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
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
Identification of a viable waste stream, the resulting outfit made from at least 80% textile waste, sourced within Aotearoa. Entries display creativity and innovation in the approach to reimaging and reworking textile waste to create a finished outfit.
Stefanie Borkowski
This design combines 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 designer’s use of zero waste pattern techniques, utilisation of hardware from the original item and incorporation of adjustability impressed the judges.
Zehyi Ruan
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 by 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
The designer’s contemporary raincoat was 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
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 were 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.
Photos / Apela Bell. Models / Karen Valerie and Arnis Cielava from 62 Models. Stylist / Dan Ahwa. Hair and makeup / Liz Hyun. Lighting Assistant / Straton Heron.
Finalists in the Mindful Fashion NZ Circular Design Awards will vie for a $50,000 prize pool with four Supreme Awards to be announced at a Gala event on September 25 at the Sapphire Room in Ponsonby Central. Tickets are available here.
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