Young designers use fur to promote sustainability
To promote fur as a sustainable solution in fashion, students from some of the world’s top design universities presented their fur designs in Beijing on Saturday at Kopenhagen Fur’s fifth Imagine Talents show.
Saturday 30 March, during Beijing Fashion Week, 22 design students from all over the world showed their take on versatile and reusable fur designs while participating in the Kopenhagen Fur Imagine Talents show and competition. Imagine Talents is a design competition focusing on educating design students from prominent design universities in the use of fur and as a result inspiring the fur world and furriers with new and innovative designs.
“We would like to teach designers of tomorrow the value of slow fashion and provide them the skills they need to work with natural and sustainable materials like fur,” says Julie Maria Iversen, Kopenhagen Fur’s VP of Design & Creativity. She adds:
“Sustainability in fashion is more relevant than ever before. Fashion brands and their consumers have a greater and greater demand for sustainable and multifunctional clothing. It is especially the unique sustainable qualities of fur that speaks to young designers trying to get established in a market where environmental awareness is essential. “
The design students participating come from acknowledged design universities in China, United Kingdom, Japan, Korea, Russia and Denmark. All the students have a vision about working with high quality natural materials and making sustainable slow-fashion designs.
“Fast fashion focuses on speed and low cost, in order to deliver frequent collections. My aim is to question the fashion choices today and make the viewer think about what it does to the environment,” says design student Cecilie Bak Lindhardt Fabricius from Design School Kolding.
The winner of this year’s Imagine Talents competition is designer duo Reiner-Andre Törner & Elisabetta Silvestri from Royal College of Art in United Kingdom. They will be awarded with an exclusive one-week creative stay with Fendi in Rome.
The winning design duo says the following about their winning design:
“We want to call attention to longevity and sustainability to a broader audience and ultimately make the fur jacket itself become a sophisticated and desirable advocate for sustainability”.
The winner of this year’s Imagine Talents competition was selected by a jury consisting of prominent personalities from the fashion world incl. Frédéric Munoz, Director of Operations – Fendi, Edward Crutchley, designer and founder – Edward Crutchley, Johannes Manakas, CEO – Manakas Frankfurt, Guo Chao, Fashion Director – L’Officiel China and Julie Maria Iversen, VP Design & Creativity - Kopenhagen Fur.