Application Guidelines
Quick Access
Quick Access
Eligibility Requirements
You can apply if you meet all of the following criteria:
- Aged 18 years or over as of application closing date of 14 March 2025
- Hold a valid ID/passport/visa/residence permit in your country of residence
- Have fewer than four years’ professional fashion design experience* at the time of application
- Have a reasonable level of English to be able to take part in activities conducted in English*
- Are applying as an individual (group applications are not permitted)
*see the FAQ page for details
Design brief
We challenge you to design a contemporary collection for a modern, fashion-forward adult, using waste textiles and guided by circular design strategies.
What are waste textiles?
For this competition, you must use waste textiles in impactful ways, reflecting on opportunities for reproducibility and scalability. Find creative solutions for fashion’s waste, starting with identifying and sourcing waste textiles. All of your designs must use textile waste and/or textiles created from waste, defined as follows for this competition:
Textile waste:
Textile swatches, cut-and-sew textiles, end-of-rolls, sampling yardage, damaged textiles, and secondhand textiles. Unsold clothing, clothing samples, and secondhand clothing may also count as textile waste if you can justify that they would not be easy to sell or reuse in their current state.
Textile created from waste:
textiles made from regenerated fibres, composed of a minimum 50% of regenerated content. This can include for example recycled cotton, recycled wool, food industry byproducts, or reclaimed plastic
To learn more, read our Waste Textile Sourcing Guide.
What are Circular Design Strategies?
For this competition, you must consider how your design decision will impact the entire lifecycle of the product by using key circular design strategies to go from linear to circular practices:
- Designing for low impact materials by sourcing materials that regenerate nature
- Designing for low waste by making and remaking products that minimise the creation of waste at the development, manufacturing and even packaging stages
- Designing for low impact process by making and remaking products in a way that is the least polluting and resource intensive at material extraction, manufacturing and distribution stages
- Designing for longevity by creating products that will be reused over and over
- Design for recyclability by considering product features and reverse logistics will allow for recycling at the end of use phase.
To deepen your understanding of the circular fashion system and maximise your chances of success in the competition, we strongly recommend you take the Redress Circular Fashion Design Course. You can also learn more with the Redress Academy.
Students: we encourage you to share with your educators the Redress Sustainable Fashion Educator Pack for classroom presentations and activities providing additional learning on circular design.
Design Requirements
Design a total of 5 physical outfits following the brief
- 4 ready-to-wear outfits
- 1 showpiece outfit
You may submit three outfits that have already been made and debuted. The remaining two outfits MUST be designs that have never been shown to the public. Only 3 outfit sketches are required for the first stage open application.
Impress the judges with strong explanations of circular design thinking
- This means reducing negative environmental impacts through your collection, from sourcing your materials to pattern design, creation, consideration of the user, and disposal after use. You should be able to clearly explain your decision-making at each step of creation.
- For the application and semi-final judging, your designs will be scored in two categories: creativity & originality, and sustainability & innovation for the circular economy.
For Grand Final judging, there will be an additional category for execution, where Finalists must demonstrate their five physical outfits were made to the highest standards.
Model measurements
If you have any questions on the application, please contact us by email to apply@redress.com.hk.
Apply for Redress Design Award 2025
