Eight emerging fashion designers from Europe and Asia were announced as finalists of The EcoChic Design Award 2013, the first international sustainable fashion design competition uniting European and Asian emerging fashion designers with a shared vision of a lower-impact fashion industry and catalyzing sustainable fashion amongst sustainable stakeholders. The EcoChic Design Award 2013, with major sponsorship from the HKSAR government, agency Create Hong Kong, educates and enables emerging designers to create mainstream clothing with minimal textile waste. With 30% of the fashion market’s growth thought to come from China in the next five years, the competition’s grand final taking place at HKTDC Hong Kong Fashion Week is a significant mark to raise awareness around sustainability in this booming market. This year’s high caliber of judges, representing design, manufacturing, retail and media industries, demonstrates the competition influence, with judges being Orsola de Castro, Co-founder of From Somewhere and Co-founder and Curator of Estethica, Johanna Ho, Fashion Designer, Margaret Kutt, Project Manager Sustainability of Esprit, Gloria Lam, Editor-in-Chief of ELLE Hong Kong and Anderson Lee, Vice Chairman of the Sustainable Fashion Business Consortium.

Judge, Anderson Lee said, ‘I am honoured to engage in the innovative and eye-opening process of the future generations’ sustainable fashion designs. Together, both judges and competitors are immersed in a learning and competitive environment, whilst traveling on the same journey to drive systematic change towards sustainability in the fashion industry.’ Over the next two and a half months, all finalists are required to put their sustainable design concepts into reality with each making a six-piece sustainable collection to present at HKTDC Hong Kong Fashion Week in January 2014, where the winners will be announced. All finalists will come to Hong Kong to show their collections on the runway, battling it out for career changing prizes and participating in sustainable fashion workshops at The Redress Forum. The EcoChic Design Award 2013 Finalists: Alex Law (Hong Kong) Xinyin Dai (Mainland China) Tsung-Chin Chiang (Taiwan) Phee Ng, Swee Yee (Singapore) Catherine Hudson (UK) Louise de Testa (France) Karen Jesse (Germany) Clémentine Sandner (UK) Wildcard finalist