C: Competitions

China may be better known for its mass production than haute couture. But it’s also home to a growing number of sustainable fashion designers. Enter the Ecochic Design Award, the nation’s first mainstream ecofashion design competition. Aimed at stimulating textile-waste-reducing designs, 10 finalists compete for the top prize: the chance to design a sustainable collection using innovatively recycled textiles for Esprit. In 2012, the prize went to Gong Jia Qi, a student at the Raffles Design Institute in Shanghai. Gong reconstructed five garments using unsold stock from Taobao, one of China’s leading online retailers.

In the Netherlands, the Amsterdam Fashion Week and Ministry of Economic Affairs first supported young ecofashion designers in 2010, when the The Green Fashion Competition was launched. The Green Fashion Competition serves as a talent show challenging fashion designers to balance the social, ecological and economical impacts of their ideas. The award winners receive a sum of money that they can use to make new collections, as well as an individual coaching programme stimulating their corporate social responsibility and marketing skills. In addition, the Amsterdam Fashion Week allows the first prize winner to show a new collection as part of its catwalk programme. Dutch topmodel Lonneke Engel being ambassador of the competition, the winners are likely to receive plenty of media attention.

Between 2010 and 2012, The Green Fashion Competition, which was open to international designers and labels, awarded prizes to sustainable design talents such as Elsien Gringhuis, Carrie Parry and Studio Jux. According to Lonneke Engel, the competition has put the spotlights on the Netherlands as a forerunner in eco & fair fashion. What’s more, because the prize winners receive plenty of information and support, they are more likely to develop a profitable as well as people & planet-friendly business. And it remains to be seen if the Ecochic Design Award can also achieve that.

Q: Quotes

Are you in dire need of some green inspiration? Check out what some of ecofashion’s pioneers are saying.

We worship chefs but we also worship the home cook – I’d like to see the same thing happen in the world of clothing. – Elizabeth Cline.

Cheap fashion means disposable fashion, and encourages more consumption, creating a vicious circle. – Sandy Black.

Making a product last is very different from making a long-lasting product. – Kate Fletcher.

How we consume shapes the future of the planet. – Katherine Hamnett.

Our planet and workforce are already stretched at the seams; to go faster is not the option. – Jessica Robertson.

People have never looked so ugly as they do today. We just consume far too much. I’m talking about all this disposable crap. What I’m saying is buy less, choose well. Don’t just suck up stuff so everybody looks like clones. – Vivienne Westwood.

We want every fashion consumer to look at garments in a different way – to see the recyclable potential, the quality of cloth and durability of design. – Annika Sanders & Kerry Seager.

As appealing as it may seem at times, what we need to do is refrain from fast fashion! When we buy a £3 t-shirt, we don’t see the true cost of fashion because the producers don’t sit on our doorstep to remind us. – Jen Marsden.

I think that sustainability is a trend that is really about going back to basics: you know what you’re wearing, eating, playing with, who you’re working for. You’re being conscious about your life and the way you live it. – Lonneke Engel.

The idea that second-hand and recycled items pass on their life experiences is what imbues redesigned clothing with its sense of value. When wearing a pre-owned item of clothing it is as if you inherit a history of lived experiences. – Sass Brown.

And not only the supergreen have sensible things to say about the sustainability of our wardrobe (or the lack thereof). Read some inspiring examples here.

To continue to buy clothes that cost about the same as a piece of gum, and then to express shock that they were not woven by contented couturiers, hand-sewing the goods while reclining on satin quilts in a Paris atelier, seems more than a touch naive. – Hadley Freeman.

So many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like. – Will Rogers.

So much of fashion is inspired by nature and in turn, we must respect its delicacy. – Diane von Furstenberg.

True fashion is about non-toxicity. If fashion pollutes, it should no longer be called fashion, it should be called pollution. – Horst Rechelbacher.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. – Oscar Wilde.