Ford Motor Company made its debut on the HKTDC Hong Kong Fashion Week runway today as part of The EcoChic Design Award 2015/16 grand finale show. Five outfits featured in the show were made entirely from the up-cycling of Ford’s sustainable seat fabrics, which are made from recycled plastic bottles. The garments were designed at The Redress Forum 2016: Ford Design Challenge, in which 10 emerging designers were tasked with creating high-fashion outfits using Ford’s sustainable seat fabrics. When designing the collection, the designers – from Hong Kong, mainland China, Thailand, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom – took inspiration from the landmarks of the city of Hong Kong.
This is the second year in a row that Ford has teamed up with Redress to raise awareness about innovative ways to reduce waste through better design. Ford’s sponsorship of The EcoChic Design Award 2015/16 reflects the company’s long-standing and growing commitment to sustainable design research.
Beyond seat fabrics, Ford produces storage bins using wheat-straw, dashboards padded with scrap cotton from recycled jeans and seat foam from a bioplastic made from soybeans.
Today, the company continues to experiment with new biomaterials, including the use of tomato fibres from discarded tomato skins, seeds and stems and retired U.S. currency, to offset petroleum use in producing bins and other plastic parts for vehicle interiors. Research teams are also experimenting with biomimicry to develop a new sustainable adhesive for use under the hood. These efforts are all part of Ford’s global sustainability strategy to lessen its environmental footprint.
