Calling all teen students: Junk Kouture initiative launches in the UK

By

Nigel TAYLOR

Published
Sep 15, 2021

Called Junk Kouture, it’s a major sustainable fashion initiative for students with an ambitious global target.

The year-round, free-to-enter programme for entrants in second-level education challenges students aged 13-18 to create bespoke garments using only recycled materials.

The goal is to launch in 13 cities by the end of 2023, with a 10-year plan to impact the lives of one billion young people across the world by 2032.

Following its success in Ireland, where it attracted 100,00 participants over 10 years, it’s now arrived in the UK and will next debut in New York, Milan, Paris and Abu Dhabi. Successful entrants will qualify for a place at the Junk Kouture World Final, taking place in September 2022.

Alongside a team of technical judges, participants will be judged by a panel including fashion veteran and Course Director of Central Saint Martins, Fabio Piras, and RuPaul’s Drag Race judge Michelle Visage.

Piras said: “Commitment to artistic expression, vision, and practice excites me as an educator whose role is to encourage and mentor fashion designers.

“Junk Kouture stands for such engagement, beautifully promoting the view that while creativity must be empowered and uncompromising, it also must be responsible and considerate”.

For over a decade in Ireland, Junk Kouture “has created an engaged, active and inspiring community of young people working together to make a difference within climate change, while changing the way young people view waste materials – promoting how they can be renewed and regenerated for a creative vision”.

It’s also partnering with activists Kids against Plastic “to amplify the movement and the role young people play as future changemakers in the environmental movement, inspiring young people to make a difference while becoming 'circular engineers' in their own right”.