A new Greenpeace survey on the shopping habits of people across Europe and Asia, finds that regularly buying too many clothes, shoes, bags and accessories has become an international phenomenon – in fact the average person now buys 60 per cent more items of clothing and keeps them for about half as long as they did just 15 years ago. This is especially striking in China and Hong Kong with up to half of consumers buying more clothes than they need and use, with social media and online shopping fueling much of this shopping craze. In June 2017, Redress and PizzaExpress joined forces for an exclusive DIY workshop hosted at the K11 restaurant, a haven of calm among the hustle and bustle of one of Hong Kong’s busiest shopping areas, inspiring participants to transform their out of use T-shirts into a fabulous, summer ready designs! From embellishing, patching to cutting techniques (and a little online inspiration), together we discovered all sorts of creative ways to breathe new life into clothing, and lighten the environmental impact of our wardrobes along the way.

The Hong Kong Government are working towards their target to reduce per capita carbon emissions to 3.3 - 3.8 tonnes by 2030. To promote positive change, this month the Environmental Protection Department hosted Hong Kong’s first ever Zero Carbon Fun Fair to celebrate World Environment Day and raise awareness of how to live more low-carbon lifestyles with help from 40+ government groups, NGOs, schools and services. Redress were invited to dress the officiating guests, including Secretary for the Environment K.S. Wong for a fashion show. We recruited the help of Make Your Wardrobe Work’s Sheryl Bolden to select designs from our rich pool of Hong Kong grown alumni which included David Lee (Artisan), Janko Lam (Classics Anew) and Angus Tsui showing attendees that sustainable fashion fits all!

Returning as China country coordinator for Fashion Revolution this year, Redress were determined to make this important campaign louder than ever before in our region. Adding momentum to the 90 countries and 70,000 individuals that got involved worldwide last year, this week we’ve already seen fantastic activity from individuals, schools and organisations across Hong Kong and China who are using social media, workshops, swapping events and even school projects to demand a fairer, safer and cleaner fashion industry, and to drive more discussion around the current state of our relationship with our clothes.
 

On 13 March 2017 we celebrated the official launch of our new book Dress [with] Sense which followed years of behind the scenes work by co-authors Christina Dean, Hannah Lane and Sofia Tärneberg, with publishers Thames & Hudson at London's Goldfinger Factory. Joining us to share their personal tips for sustainable wardrobes were inspiring role models Dilys Williams, Ash Black, Safia Minney, Katie Jones and Johanna Ho. 

In September 2016 we hosted a series of three of our ever-popular secondhand clothing pop-up shops with partners PizzaExpress, The Annex and KONG. We had record numbers of customers searching for gems from our impressive range of pre-loved luxury brands to quality high-street brands. All proceeds went to support our work.

In September 2016, we hosted not one, not two, but three of our ever-popular secondhand clothing pop-up shops with partners PizzaExpress, The Annex and KONG. Customers shopped from an impressive range of pre-loved luxury brands to quality high-street brands with all proceeds going to support our work.

From 5 - 9 September, we organised the Get Redressed Clothing Drive 2016. This clothing drive, supported by corporate donor partners, collected approximately 4.5 tonnes of unwanted secondhand clothing and accessory donations which were then distributed to local environmental and welfare charities in Hong Kong. In addition, the clothing drive raised awareness about Hong Kong’s high clothing waste rates among the public.

Pacific Coffee selected Redress as their charity partner for the month of September 2016. Throughout the month, cash donations were accepted at till point collection boxes in all Pacific Coffee Hong Kong coffeehouses. Generous donations collected will go to support Redress' 2017 work in reducing textile waste in the fashion industry though designer, consumer and industry engagements. 

This clothing drive will give unwanted clothes a second life and reduce clothing waste and bring benefit to local environmental and social charities. Anyone can join by dropping their unwanted quality clothes off at the Caelum Greene store. More information here. If your company are interested in joining our corporate drive get in touch here.

On 7-11 September 2015, we organised our second annual Keep Caring Clothing Drive in partnership with Miele. This clothing drive, supported by corporate donor partners, collected 3.5 tonnes of unwanted secondhand clothing and accessory donations that were distributed to local environmental and welfare charities in Hong Kong. The clothing drive also raised awareness about Hong Kong’s high clothing waste rates among the public, with participating partners engaging their teams with Redress’ supporting educational information.

The Y WASTE? was an exhibit uncovering the dark shadow of fashion. It contained 360kg of discarded secondhand clothes representing the amount of textiles dumped into Hong Kong’s landfills every two minutes, and was displayed at Hong Kong’s K11 Art Mall from 7 - 20 July 2015.

We partnered with Laws Group Ltd for a highly successful clothing drive where we collected a record 2.5 onnes of second hand clothing and accessory donations to divert unwanted clothes from landfills to local environmental and welfare charities. In addition, the high quality clothing and accessories were sold at our fourth Get Redressed second hand pop-up shop, which was held at D2 Place in Lai Chi Kok, where we raised a record amount of charitable funds to drive our future educational consumer campaigns.

For Earth Hour 2015, we partnered with WWF for their One Earth Mission focus week on Clothing mpacts, and organised a DIY workshop to demonstrate simple ways to give new life to clothes and contribute to the reduction of clothing waste and consumption. We invited our The EcoChic Design Award 2014/15 Alumni Hill Tse to lead the session where she guided the participants to transform their unwanted t-shirts into stylish tote bags.

In late September 2014, we organised our highly successful and inaugural Keep Caring Clothing Drive 2014. This was a Hong Kong clothing drive supported by 17 corporate donor partners and reaching over 6000 staff that collected an impressive 1.4 tonnes of unwanted secondhand clothing and accessory donations in order to benefit local environmental and welfare charities and to raise awareness about Hong Kong’s high clothing waste rates.

We have been organising our Get Redressed Pop-up shops since 2013, selling stylish and quality secondhand clothes and accessories at PizzaExpress Hong Kong’s selected restaurants. These well-attended Pop-Ups allow consumers to love and wear more sustainable wardrobes and support our work to reduce waste. All proceeds from these Pop-Up sales are used to fuel our consumer campaigns further.

We are actively organising engaging DIY fashion workshops for consumers to educate them about how they can reduce their clothing waste in a stylish and sustainable way. In these, we have worked with DIY fashion expert, blogger and author, Geneva Vanderzeil, to ensure that our mission to reduce waste was dialogued around dining tables and then driven home into attendees’ wardrobes. Redress continue to provide DIY workshops, follow our facebook page for announcements.

In March 2014, Redress’ founder Christina Dean presented her ‘You are what you wear’ opinions at a TEDx event organised by Hong Kong Baptist University. In her compelling talk, Christina inspires audiences about the importance of how they dress and turns the responsibility for change on consumers, not just the industry.

For the fourth year running, we have merged two of our favourites – fashion and food – into a deliciously impactful series of educational consumer workshops and secondhand pop-up shops to raise awareness about clothing waste reduction in collaboration with PizzaExpress Hong Kong.

We are actively organising engaging DIY fashion workshops for consumers to educate them about how they can reduce their clothing waste in a stylish and sustainable way. In these, we have worked with DIY fashion expert, blogger and author, Geneva Vanderzeil, to ensure that our mission to reduce waste was dialogued around dining tables and then driven home into attendees’ wardrobes. Redress continue to provide DIY workshops, follow our facebook page for announcements.

We collaborated with Miele on a series of secondhand clothing and consumer care workshops for numerous notorious fashion influencers, ournalists and financial industry representatives.

We collaborated with Esprit, our The EcoChic Design Award 2012 retail partner, on the ‘Recycled Collection by Esprit’. These recycled textiles collections were designed by The EcoChic Design Award Hong Kong Winner 2012, Wister Tsang, and China 2012, Gong Jia Qi. Combined, their collections retailed in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand between May to October 2013.

Nearly 100% of textiles are recyclable. Yet everyday, Hong Kongers throw away 217 tonnes of textiles and clothing into our nearly-full landfills. Redress and KEE Club Hong Kong held a pre-Chinese New Year clothing donation drive for a cause in January 2013, collecting approximately 500kg of donations in just one day.

The 365 Challenge was a one-year secondhand clothing challenge seeing our Founder, Christina Dean, only wearing 100% dumped and discarded secondhand clothes to promote the ‘Redress it, don’t bin it’ concept. Every day from January to December 2013, Christina wore secondhand clothes, working with 12 fashion stylists, their sustainable style-kits and a huge dose of fashion activism to put secondhand clothes on the fashion frontline. The challenge was split into 12 monthly sustainable fashion themes, including capsule wardrobe, durability, repair, DIY, sustainable laundry care in order to showcase 365 inspiring ways to keep clothing waste out of landfill and in the fashion loop. All secondhand clothes were sourced with support of Friends of the Earth (Hong Kong) and TRAID (for August) and most of the clothes (except those favourites Christina just couldn't let go of!) were be sold to raise funds for Redress and Friends of the Earth (Hong Kong).

Redress and 12 of #HKFashionBloggers  notorious fashionistas joined forces in an effort to rattle consumers’ wardrobes and consciousness about Hong Kong’s high textile waste rates. Did you know that on average we throw 217 tonnes of textiles into Hong Kong’s landfills everyday? Do you know how fashionably fantastic many of the clothes are that we discard?

We presented a collaborative exhibition at Hong Kong’s Interstoff Asia Essential on multi-stakeholders’ approaches to cutting waste out of fashion. Our exhibition shared expertise from NGOs China Water Risk, Greenpeace and carbon management company, RESET Carbon on how textile, water, chemical and energy wastage can be reduced along the fashion supply chain. We showcased waste reducing garments, designed by Esprit, Levis, M&S, Patagonia, Timberland and Reclaim to Wear, to bring this topic to life.

We held a workshop for select Levi Strauss & Co’s Hong Kong staff to brainstorm sustainable fashion design. In this interactive workshop, we provided a lively overview of sustainable fashion design and introduced an unusual challenge, where Levi Strauss & Co’s staff picked their way through bags discarded used clothes to challenge their staff on ‘Why do people throw away so many clothes?

We organised and moderated this interactive panel discussion at HKTDC Fashion Week. The panel explored the fashion designer’s influential role in minimising a garment’s environmental impact through textile waste reduction. It highlighted the techniques, trends and business opportunities in reducing textile waste through sustainable fashion design.