Written by Bel Jacobs
The original documentary Frontline Fashion was seen by millions but this year’s TV special edition is set to broadcast the competition and its aims even further afield. Bel Jacobs reports.
Launched in September 2016, Redress’ groundbreaking documentary Frontline Fashion followed the Redress Design Award 2015/16’s finalists during the final stages of the competition and as they presented their minimal waste collections to international judges for a chance to design for leading luxury brand Shanghai Tang - knowing that only the most creative and the most stunning would win the prize.
In an extraordinary journey of inspiration, the young designers went behind-the-scenes at discarded clothing warehouses and sustainable manufacturer, TAL Apparel, to find ways to change the future of fashion - one of the world’s most polluting industries - for the better.
Frontline Fashion I was broadcast to 120 million households across the world on Fashion One Television and beyond, demonstrating just how deeply issues resonated with consumers. Frontline Fashion I is now part of an anthology of hard-hitting films including Before the Flood, True Cost, Food Inc, Plastic Oceans and An Inconvenient Truth that continue to transform attitudes and behaviours.
This year, Frontline Fashion II looks set to reach even wider audiences by turning the weeks leading up to the final into a special edition for TV. “We’ve been determined to translate the passion we see every year in Hong Kong at the Redress Design Award from our incredible finalists into entertaining TV,” says Redress’ Founder Christina Dean. “To bring the world’s largest sustainable design competition to a global audience and have them fall in love with it is a great feat.”
In this exciting and accessible documentary, Redress and award-winning production partner, Mustard, will transform the aims and ethos of the competition into a format to be viewed by millions on Lifetime Asia, using the designers’ collections, created from re-imagined textile waste, to prove that creativity and sustainability are not mutually exclusive.
“The best way to educate is to entertain,” says one of the Executive Producers, Sonya Madden. “People engage on screens. So inspiring change has to take place on screens.”
“We joined forces with Redress to create this high-impact documentary,” says Lindsay Robertson of Mustard. “As documentary film makers, we see so much bad news out there about the fashion industry’s negative impact, but we also see change and we want to tell that story.
“Film is a very powerful medium to inspire,” she continues. “We’ve crafted Frontline Fashion to inject change into how fashion consumers around the world think, and feel, about their clothes.” As you watch the grand final, keep your eyes out for the cameras – because the Redress Design Award is about to go global.
This article originally appeared in the EcoChic Design Award 2017 Magazine.
*The Redress Design Award was previously named the EcoChic Design Award