Real Leather, Stay Different 2022 names first judge
09/03/2022
Last year’s global winner, Emily Omesi, now a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and junior design assistant at Oscar de la Renta, will judge the London-based final in September, alongside a yet unnamed panel of “fashion pioneers and future industry experts”.
Once more supported by the Leather and Hide Council of America (LHCA) and Arts Thread, an online platform for emerging artists and designers, this year’s competition will also include entrants for the Nordics for the first time. Real Leather, Stay Different has held regional competitions in the UK, China, Italy and Taiwan since the end of 2019.
Co-founder and president of Arts Thread, Alex Brownless, praised Ms Omesi for the “creativity and passion for leather” she demonstrated with her winning design, Bacterial Genetics, last year. He emphasised the need to again draw industry attention to “the critical need to reject fast fashion and replace this with slow style” through the work of this year’s entrants.
LCHA president, Stephen Sothmann, similarly underscored the need to inspire and encourage emerging designers to work with “natural, sustainable, responsibly produced real leather”, as opposed to synthetics.
Criticising fast fashion and its reliance on petroleum-derived fabrics, Mr Sothmann further highlighted leather’s own contrasting credentials as a meat and dairy by-product “which puts hides that otherwise go to landfill to good use” and, for context, stated that 120 million hides are thrown away annually.
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