Fashion student Lilli McKenzie has been named the winner of the Mazda Australia Design Award for her sustainable, fashion-forward designs.
Lilli, who grew up in Canberra and now calls Melbourne home, is completing her honours year in a Bachelor of Fashion (Design) at RMIT, and says sustainability is the way forward for designers.
“I think it’s so great how a lot of designers today are using sustainability as a motivator for creating new and exciting designs,” she says.
“We have to consider where the final outcomes are going and not just thinking about the materials that we use but what’s going to happen to those materials once the outfit or the garment has reached its lifespan.”
Competitors were required to use materials featured in the new Mazda MX30 and Lilli created designs using recycled t-shirts and felt, vegan leather and heritage cork.
“I constructed a t-shirt dress which was the undergarment and that was made out of recycled t-shirt and I had a graphic printed onto it which was inspired by an embossing of the felt on the boot of the MX30,” she says.
Lilli then used vegan leather bonded onto recycled felt to create a skirt and used cork for a bag.
“I’d said from the beginning that I wanted to incorporate the heritage cork into the design.”
As the competition winner, Lilli will be flown to Japan to meet with Mazda’s global design chief.
“It’s nice to have the hard work that I put into it validated and hats off to my friends and fellow competitors,” she says.
“It was a really tough few weeks in the lead up. So definitely a relief and it’s nice to have a bit of validation.
Moving forward, Lilli’s looking forward to finishing her honours year and “seeing where it takes me”.
“The competition has definitely put me in good stead for next year for looking for positions in the fashion industry.”
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