Inspiring change in China, the world’s fashion powerhouse

Redress delivers: ‘Forces of Fashion’ Circular Fashion Masterclass with Vogue China

Redress delivered a Circular Fashion Masterclass to 15 of China’s most talented and influential fashion designers, who rose to global recognition through the inaugural Vogue China Fashion Fund. Our Masterclass, as part of Vogue China’s ‘Forces of Fashion’ event, brought us up close and personal with some of China’s most impactful designers, who will be leading the industry for years to come. We were grateful to have the support of our China ambassadors, celebrity influencer Bonnie Chen and academic leader in China’s fashion industry, Christine Tsui.

Redress’ educational presence in China — the world's largest clothing consumer and producer — enables us to reach key industry leaders to create outsized impact and change. 

Praise goes to Vogue China, under the leadership of Editor-in-Chief, Margaret Zhang and Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief, Anna Wintour, for integrating a sustainability focus into this inaugural fashion fund. The world needs more of fashion's elite to raise sustainability within its higher echelons.

Moving beyond this masterclass, Redress will continue to mentor the Vogue China Fashion Fund winner, Zhong Zixin about circularity in fashion to support her ongoing career. Watch this space! 

Redress delivers: VF Circular Design Challenge

The VF Circular Design Challenge brought together emerging fashion designers with industry professionals, disrupting an everyday fashion item by applying circular thinking. Redress challenged senior fashion students from the Shanghai International College of Fashion and Innovation (SCF College), Donghua University, in collaboration with VF Corporation to “hack” a classic hoodie with new design ideas and solutions for circularity — all within just four hours.

Kicking off the challenge day, students and their teachers were motivated by VF Corporation leaders Winnie Ma, Sara Stefanski, and Krystyna Dzan, who each presented insight to VF’s sustainability journey.

Redress’ Founder, Christina Dean, continued with an informative and inspiring speech making the case for pioneering sustainability in fashion. In addition to the economic incentives — with US$500 billion lost every year due to clothing under-utilisation and lack of recycling — there is also the case of being human.

“At the heart of us all is a desire to do better,” shared Christina. “And this is true in fashion designers, with the need to create something beautiful, purposeful, desired, useful, more clever, and better than what’s come before us.”

Splitting into teams, each group had exclusive time to sit with the product and marketing team from one of four global brands: Vans, icebreaker, The North Face and Dickies. Using Redress educational guidelines, teams working together tapped their various skill sets to develop ideas and solutions to address circularity challenges in the fashion industry.

In preparation for the challenge, our Redress Education Director gave an educational talk to fashion students at SCF College about what circular fashion means, as well as how to apply methods for designing sustainable fashion.