Westfields announce sustainable fashion winners
Westfield London has announced the winners of its ‘Future Fashion’ competition, in collaboration with the Royal College of Art.
Six of the very best upcoming designers in sustainable fashion were selected to be winners with their submissions being commissioned and showcased at Europe’s largest shopping centre in an exhibition to coincide with the launch of London’s Fashion Week.
The judges of Future Fashion selected six finalists and commissioned each artist with £2,000 to complete their proposed works. The finished pieces are now being exhibited in Westfield London’s eight exhibition windows located on Silver Walk. Each window showcases of one of six different artistic media; textiles, sculpture, painting, photography, graphic design, and jewellery.
Artists’ designs were assessed by a panel of judges from internationally recognised brands. These include the Royal College of Art, John Lewis & Partners, Save Your Wardrobe, Emily Carter London and Love not Landfill. Future Fashion is part of Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield’s UK Community Resilience Programme – a five-year action plan that consolidates all the company’s work in its communities aligned to URW’s global ‘Better Places 2030’ strategy.
Future Fashion’s six winners are:
- Graphics – Brand Conscience Ltd designed the Sus’d Sustainability Graphic to empower consumers to instantly judge the relative sustainability impact of their fashion choices, to create more conscious consumption and improve the future health of the planet by simplifying sustainability and scoring transparently.
- Illustration – Illustrator, educator and activist Elyse Blackshaw’s ‘You Can Be A Change Maker’ design pushes the boundaries of fashion illustration as a communication tool to highlight the relationship between fashion and the consumer whilst raising awareness of environmental impacts.
- Jewellery – Founder of Pivot, Alice Moxley’s “Building and sustaining opportunities” is a proposal to make a capsule collection with a group of Makers who are experiencing homelessness to pivot their lives through making and enterprise. They have co-designed a collection which is both environmentally sustainable, as well as enforcing their message of sustainable and long-term opportunity building.
- Photography – Winner Svetlana Talanova exhibits her camera-less photography series, created by manipulating photosensitive paper, light and time with sustainability at the core of her practice.
- Sculpture – Meredith Wood’s work questions the fact that most garments are made of plastic and aims to raise awareness of fashion’s plastic problem through biodegradable plastic sculptures on show at Westfield London.
- Textile – Morphogenesis by Bea Brücker is set in a speculative reality characterized by pandemics and dead zones. In this scenario, individuals band together to use Biofashion as a political movement that empowers people through the creation of tools and communities.
Harita Shah, Marketing Director UK and Creative, Media, Events & Brand – Europe at URW says: “We are so pleased we’re able to provide emerging talent from the local community a platform to have their work not only commissioned but exhibited here at Westfield London. Shining a light on the designers’ passion for sustainability in fashion, this competition also aims to incentivise consumers to adopt more sustainable habits whilst highlighting our commitment to embedding sustainable and community-driven initiatives across our centres. Well done to all those that entered and to the six winners of the different mediums!”
Globally £12 billion worth of clothing gets thrown into landfill every year. There’s no need to throw clothes in the bin – now customers can drop off unwanted clothes to our guest services desk located on level 0 in the Atrium and we will ensure they get recycled by Love not Landfill.
