Redress sustainable fashion awards 2026
Hong Kong based environmental NGO Redress has announced Jon Liesenfeld as winner of its sustainable fashion awards
Designers from around the world were invited to submit fashion designs to this year's Redress Design Award 2026 that showed use of circular techniques including factory surplus, discarded garments, excess new stock, and furnishings waste. Pictured above: designs from this year's winner, Germany's Jon Liesenfeld
Textile waste is a national and global crisis, with an estimated 120 million tonnes generated annually, of which 80 per cent ends up in landfill or incinerators, says Redress. Even though we're now in 2026 and the problem has been known about for decades, the global textile industry is only 0.3 per cent circular.
But it's hoped that as more fashion designers and producers accept the problems caused by excess fashion production, so waste can be minimised. But for this to happen, fashion needs to become part of the circular economy.
'My generation of designers won't be judged just on aesthetics. We must underhand circularity - durability, repairability and recyclability - from the drawing board to filling the sales racks, says Jon Liesenfeld, who out-designed seven other finalists (from Kong King, the Chinese Mainland, the UK, Austria and Israel) to win this year's Redress Design Award.
Dr Christina Dean is founder of Redress. She is deeply concerned about fashion's direction of travel: 'While the fashion industry faces serious challenges - from geopolitical pressures, inflation, complex global supply chains to incoming legislation - it is catastrophically still on its wasteful runaway trainwreck.
'Circularity is flatlining despite circular textile business models being estimated to generate some USD 700 billion in economical value by 2030.'
And ultra fast fashion brands are a real and present danger, exacerbating clothing waste, she asserts.
However, it's not all doom and gloom ...for example Redress alumnus Kevin Germanier closed Paris Couture Week in the spring with a collection made entirely from LVMH-owned brands' excess inventory, and Angus Tsui and Eric Wong, also Redress alumni, have transformed discarded DHL courier uniforms into accessories.
Upcycling continues to go mainstream with LVMH Group, Miu Liu, Coach, Uniqlo, Converse, Wrangler and Vivienne Westwood developing various upcycled collections.
