The Eco Chic Design Award is open for entries

The EcoChic Design Award is a sustainable fashion design competition inspiring emerging fashion designers and students to create mainstream clothing with minimal textile waste.

The 2013 competition cycle is now open for applications from fashion designers with less than three years’ professional experience and fashion design students living in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, UK, France, Belgium and Germany.

Applications can be sent until 15th of August 2013, with this year’s focus is on zero waste designers, upcycling designers, and reconstruction designers.The first price is to design a sustainable collection for Esprit’s Recycled Collection range next to a winner’s show at Hong Kong Fashion Week and £3000 price money. Last year TED researchers met with the touring finalists Wister Tsang and Angus Tsui from the competition and introduced them to TED’s TEN and our work at TED research.

For the full schedule, prices and information on the award please visit the Eco Chic Design Award site.

Redesign Award 2013

The Redesign Award 2013 organised by Design Austria and Redesign+ is an international competition for innovative and creative ideas for products made of recyclable materials. The competition is open to employed and self-employed professional designers and design students within the European Union who wish to put their unrealised design ideas into production. Each winner in the categories Mobility & Public Space, Household & Domestic Live, Accessories & Giveaways, and Jewellery & Fashion will be granted a price of 1000 Euros, and one of the projects will be selected to be realised in Austrian and Hungarian socioeconomic companies. The project links the creation of jobs to a sustainable environment through the establishment of new work opportunities in the fields of reuse and redesign. Submission deadline is the 31st of January 2013.

The English version of the call for entries is downloadable here.

Recent competitions and projects

A few competitions and projects have been coming our way which we would like to share:

Victor Papanek Social Design Awards are launching this year and the competition is open to designers and students who have developed a product, in realised or protoyped stage, which “aims to achieve net zero environmental impact, or which offer social benefit to underserved segments of society or which are driven by socially responsive considerations”.

The judges will also consider Design Concepts not yet fully realized or produced but in development “which address transdisciplinary design perspectives on urbanization, in areas such as housing, transportation, accessibility (inclusive design), communication, social and medical care, and the implications of national and international migration.”

Perhaps the textile/fashion students who are entering the VF/TFRC Competition may have developed design concepts that would be approporaite for this Award as well. The winners will be exhibited in exhibtions in both Autsria and at the Museum of Arts and Crafts in New York, and the application deadline is June 1st.

Nottingham Trent University has announced the following opportunities to study for an PhD under the supervision of Professor Tim Cooper. The first is a PhD Studentship in Consumers and Possessions: A Cross-Disciplinary Exploration of Sustainable Practices. This is a cross-disciplinary studentship involving research into how people use their possessions and the built environment with regard to sustainability and the implications of this for design practice. One of its key elements will be to relate knowledge in sustainable architecture, sustainable fashion and sustainable product design. For further information please visit here The closing date for applications is midnight on Friday 15 April 2011.

The other offer is the Vice Chancellor’s PhD Studentships – Sustainable Design / Sustainable Consumption / Product Longevity. Research proposals are invited for entry to a competition for one of twelve Vice Chancellor’s PhD studentships. Proposals supported by the Sustainable Consumption Research Group may be on any theme relating to sustainable design or sustainable consumption. Proposals relating to the life-span of consumer durables are especially welcome. For further information please visit here. The closing date for applications is Monday 18 April 2011. Image: Alistair Fuad-Luke’s Design Seeds Workshops 2009