Eight Asian designers looking to tackle sustainability issues via innovation will converge in Shanghai on Friday to present their final works to a panel of judges as they compete for the first Sustasia Fashion Prize, which is cohosted by the Shanghai Fashion Designer Association and Shaway Yeh’s sustainability agency Yehyehyeh.
The eight finalists include Tommy Ambiyo Tedji from Indonesia; Pratyush Kumar from India; Kha Hoang Ngo from Vietnam; Jaggy Glarino from the Philippines; Karmuel Young from Hong Kong; Angel Chen and Ruohan Nie from mainland China, and Tetsuya Doi from Japan. They will be judged by a panel of industry experts, including Andrew Wu, president of LVMH Greater China; Stella Zhang, general manager of corporate affairs and ESG management at JNBY; Li Na, Chinese tennis legend; Sarah Cragg, Asia head at the Earthshot Prize; Christophe Mollet, China chief executive officer of Seiya Nakamura 2.24; You Si, general manager of commercial marketing at Xiaohongshu; Xiaolei Lv, secretary general at Shanghai Fashion Week and executive vice chairman at Shanghai Fashion Designer Association, and Yeh herself.
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The winner of the prize will receive 100,000 renminbi, or $14,000, and be given the opportunity to receive supply chain and retail-end support.
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For the final stage of the competition, the finalists collaborated with global industry leaders to create their final competition pieces using cutting-edge sustainable and next-generation materials.
Material providers include Oleatex and Modern Meadow, producers of plant-based leather alternatives; Otex, an organic silk-maker; Savian by BioFluff, the plant-based fur company; Spiber, the brewed protein-maker; Zeno and Erdos, the biotech-dyed cashmere-maker; Celys, a compostable polyester producer; InResst, maker of recycled nylon from fishing nets; Woolmark and Nanshan fashion, which co-created recycled wool textiles; Advanced Denim, a waterless dyeing denim company Ecosoi, a pineapple fiber-maker, and W.ell Fabrics, a bamboo silk-maker.
For Yeh, marrying sustainable material producers with designers will help test drive laboratory-based innovations in the real world and allow designers to become acquainted with the latest developments in sustainability technology. “The materials scientist can also learn the designers’ language and mindsets,” Yeh added.
“Not only did we gather some top international material companies like Spiber and Modern Meadow, which are already all in the pipeline of luxury brands — they are very happy to support young talents and to explore different application possibilities — but we also gathered some really strong Chinese ones like InResst, a recycled nylon producer that outperforms its international counterpart; Advanced Denim, and Erdos, created with Zeno’s bacterial dyes, all innovations from within the conventional textile industry,” explained Yeh.
For Yeh, the award is also aimed at broadening “the expression of fashion.”
“One of the key values of this prize is to show how creative, sophisticated, diverse and beautifully crafted that sustainable fashion can look like,” Yeh said.
With eight designers representing seven countries and regions, the prize will also “shed light on talents from the lesser-noticed markets,” Yeh added. “Their unique practices and perspectives have remained the biggest inspiration for me in organizing this Prize.”
From Saturday to April 6, an exhibition of the finalists’ works will be open to the public at Suhe Haus, a historic bank-turned-art hub by the Suzhou Creek.