Cape Town based designer, Lara Klawikowski won the Country Road Changemaker Award at the second annual Twyg Sustainable Fashion Awards in Cape Town on the 19 November.
The Twyg Sustainable Fashion Awards 2020 recognise the strides that are being made by South African designers who implement sustainable, circular, and regenerative approaches to design and who foster ethical practices in the industry. As sponsor of the main award, iconic fashion brand, Country Road continues its commitment to prioritise sustainability and support for local South African talent.
While sustainable fashion in South Africa exists on a small scale, a thoughtful shift can be felt across the design landscape. There is a new generation of fashion designers demonstrating what it truly means to ensure luxury and innovation need not be compromised in environmental responsibility.
Not-for-profit organisation and online publication, Twyg devoted to design, sustainability and putting South Africa on the fashion map, specifically created the Sustainable Fashion Awards to increase awareness around sustainable and ethical fashion, as well as showcase the impact that eco-conscious fashion and textile designers, and retail brands have on the local fashion industry.
The Country Road Changemaker Award saw the winners of the seven categories vie for the coveted title of overall winner. Country Road’s head designer Maria Rinaldi-Cant joined the panel of local experts in fashion retail and sustainability. “It is about more than looking to an idealistic future, we needed to understand every one of the designer’s choices from sourcing to life cycle but also the marketability of the collection.
“Lara’s designs really inspired the judging panel,” Maria Rinaldi-Cant says, “Besides her originality that stood out for us all, we were impressed in particular by her re-fabricated materials and advanced pattern-making.”
An ecstatic, Lara Klawikowski explains, “I design avant-garde wedding dresses which are created by hand at my studio in Cape Town. By turning an unlikely material into something wearable, the element of surprise, has always been part of the appeal for my designs. Especially since it’s really difficult to source sustainable fabrics in our local fabric stores.
Frustratingly, most fabric and materials used for bridal and occasion wear is synthetic – pure plastic, in fact. Given that a wedding dress is worn once, the bridal scene is an extremely polluting industry. So, for a custom-designed wedding dress to be made from recycled, upcycled materials, re-fabricated by hand, shows a genuine appreciation for slow fashion.”
Talking about her winning entry, Lara says “For my latest bridal collection, ‘Strange Flowers’, I looked at all the small sustainable changes I could implement. I was inspired visually by the unusual, organic textures and shapes of flowers and plants. As each pattern piece is created by hand and has its idiosyncrasies, wearing one of these designs is like picking a flower to wear.
The intriguing textures and proportions of the designs prompt the wearer to look closer and inspect what they are wearing. Since a wedding dress is one of the only times someone makes an effort to investigate every detail of what they are wearing, I used plastic refuse bags and grocery shopping bags layered and sewn together to form panels of collaged colours, and then smocked and sculpted into dress shapes.
This collection was exercise in using recycled materials to create something elegant and glamorous in a sustainable way.” Elle Roseby, Managing Director of Country Road Group and respected sustainability thought-leader, comments “It’s extremely important to marry talent with experience so that we can build up the power of the next generation.
The Twyg Awards, and the Changemaker award in particular, gives designers like Lara and all the other entrants, a loud hailer to tell the world about the new era for fashion, and Lara’s R100 000 prize money will give her a financial boost to gear her business up responsibly.”
For more visit: https://twyg.co.za/
