Filipina designer makes the finals in sustainable fashion design challenge

Mara San Pedro has made it to the top 10 finalists of the global sustainable fashion design awards Redress Design Award 2025.

Redress, the Asia-focused environmental NGO dedicated to reducing clothing’s negative environmental impact since 2007, made the announcement on 2 June. This initiative is the world’s largest sustainable fashion design competition and will conclude at a runway show in September 2025.

Redress recognizes that an estimated 80 percent of a product’s environmental impact is locked in at design stage. This is where fashion designers and the design team can influence the design board stage.

This year’s 10 Finalists stand out as agents of change, who were expertly judged and selected from a global pool of talented designers from 57 regions. They are set to invigorate sustainable fashion with their innovative use of waste textiles and circular design concepts. Their creations could be the key to disrupting the industry’s linear “take, make, dispose” model.

Aside from Mara San Pedro, the other finalists are: Casbeth Tshegofatso Marobane, South Africa; Lucie Albert, Germany; Carla Zhang, Mainland China; Hawon Park, Korea; Nathan Moy, Hong Kong; Heyun Pan, Mainland China; Wen Hanzhang, Canada; Hugo Dumas, France; and Yixuan Nie, USA.

Dr. Christina Dean, founder and Board chair of Redress, said, “The fashion industry’s environmental footprint is a ticking time bomb. Every second, the equivalent of one rubbish truck of textiles is landfilled or burned and this is worsening. Redress’ role vitally brings together designers, academia and industry annually via our competition to encourage courageous acts to accelerate circular fashion.”

The finalists are now gearing up to present their collections at the Grand Final Fashion Show in September 2025, coming together for a 10-day educational bootcamp of workshops and challenges.

Designers rising to the challenge

Between 100 to 150 billion items of new clothing are produced every year (according to reports from the McKinsey & the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2015, and World Economic Forum & ShareCloth), and the majority of clothing is landfilled or burned at the end of their life.

Designers and consumers must be educated and informed about how to design and use clothing more sustainably.

This overproduction and overconsumption are contributing to soaring textile waste. An estimated 92 million tons of textile waste are created annually from the fashion industry, according to Global Fashion Agenda and The Boston Consulting Group (2017), Pulse of the Fashion Industry. Textile waste is estimated to increase by about 60 percent between 2015 and 2030, it adds.

Redress is urgently inviting fashion designers and academia to come together to “rise to the challenge” by implementing circular design practices and advocating for change at the design stage and at educational institutions.