We the Makers Sustainable Fashion Prize 2023 award winner, Canwen Zhao, is a multidisciplinary fashion designer currently based in Melbourne. With a background in Chinese painting and further studies in fashion and art, Canwen brings a unique aesthetic vision to her practice.
During her studies in 2017, she visited a recycling depot and experienced garment sorting, which made her aware of the waste of resources in the fashion industry. She has worked in various fields ranging from fashion and film costume to IP design and commercial illustration, and her designs often address cultural, religious, and environmental issues.
Winning design '35 Life' provides playful solutions to the increasing environmental threat of sun exposure. The metamorphic piece, which can be worn in multiple ways and packs down into a bag, is made from both functional and decorative materials. Both the colours and the form are indebted to historic Chinese dress but reimagined for a contemporary wearer.
About the Sustainable Fashion Prize
We the Makers is a major biennial event on the National Wool Museum calendar centred around the Sustainable Fashion Prize. Aligned with Geelong's designation as a UNESCO City of Design, the National Wool Museum is dedicated to championing the past, present, and future of fashion with recognition to Geelong's ongoing role in the wool and textile industries.
Our definition of Sustainable Fashion is holistic, and champions ethical practice, design ingenuity, material consciousness and business innovation. Every two years we will showcase emerging themes from the world of sustainable fibre and textiles through the next generation of fashion designers.
Prizes
All short-listed entries to the Sustainable Fashion Prize were judged by a panel of local and international industry experts.
- National Wool Museum Designer of the Year Award ($10,000)
- UNESCO City of Design, People's Choice Award ($2,000)
About the Judges
- Doctor Ricarda Bigolin
Doctor Bigolin is a designer, educator and researcher, currently holding the role of Associate Dean of Fashion and Textiles Design, at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
Her research is predominately practice based exploring and questioning the social, cultural, ethical and political context of fashion production and consumption.
Key practice includes D&K, a collaborative and critical fashion practice producing garments, performances, exhibitions, texts and films in leading art and design museums, galleries, publications and universities globally.
- Benjamin Norsworthy
Benjamin Norsworthy has worked across social and environmental sustainability topics for almost 15 years.
He has extensive experience in the fashion industry, having worked for Burberry's in-house responsibility team with a focus on responsible materials sourcing and circularity.
Benjamin was also public affairs lead at the Global Fashion Agenda and worked on the 2019 edition of the Copenhagen Fashion Summit.
He has advised the Amsterdam Fashion Academy on sustainability curriculum design, and has guest lectured on sustainable fashion at Oxford Brookes and Buckinghamshire New University.
Benjamin is currently co-founder and chief sustainability officer at Bendi, a sustainability-tech start-up building supply chain traceability and risk solutions for fashion and textile companies.
- Doctor Christian Thompson AO
Doctor Thompson is a Bidjara man of the Kunja Nation with Irish and Chinese heritage.
His practice spans across video, photography, sculpture, textiles, performance and sound, evolving through a process of auto – ethnography.
While employing various modes of research, he connects his own experience to larger social, political, cultural meanings and understandings.
Thompson grew up in rural and urban environments in the 1980s and 90s and he interweaves references to his Bidjara culture throughout his multidisciplinary practice to address issues of colonialism, identity and cultural representation.
His doctoral research and art practice has had a critical impact on International and Australian art.
In 2018 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished services to the visual arts and as a role model to young indigenous artists in the Queen's Birthday honours list.
