Meet the 2025 Semi-finalists

Hugo Dumas

Redress Design Award

  • 2023, 2024, 2025
 Finalist

Meet The Designer

“I believe sustainability is an engineering challenge, where all actors of the fashion industry’s production chain should work hand-in-hand, in order to create new opportunities and solutions.”
Hugo Dumas
“I believe sustainability is an engineering challenge, where all actors of the fashion industry’s production chain should work hand-in-hand, in order to create new opportunities and solutions.”
Hugo Dumas

Bio

Hugo Dumas is a Finalist of the Redress Design Award 2025. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Fashion Design (Pattern Maker and Stylist) from ECAMOD, Paris, France.

Hugo Dumas was also a Finalist in 2024 and a Rising Talent in 2023.

Region

  • France

Collection

  • Gender neutral

Design Techniques

  • Upcycling, Zero Waste

Redress Design Award Collection

Hugo’s Redress Design Award collection, ‘The Peri-Urbans’, explores the designer’s conflicting identities through the functionality and historical craftsmanship of workwear, alongside a cohabitation of masculinity and femininity. For the quilting, Hugo developed a glue-free wadding made from fibres shredded from textile waste, sorted by colour and composition to allow for recyclability. Designing for low waste, tops are handwoven from a cooperative’s surplus selvedges into a textured fabric. Zero-waste garments make use of defective stock made from linen, a material chosen for its minimal water consumption, local availability, harmlessness to soil, and recyclability.

Q&A with the designer

Redress were actually the ones that turned me into a sustainable designer.

Back when I first sent my application to the contest in 2023, I was picked to go through the Rising Talents Programme. After winning the Rising Talents prize that year, I continued my educational journey over sustainable fashion. I understood I could have an impact beyond the garment.

In 2024 I had the honor to be a Redress Design Award Finalist and showcased in Hong Kong. For 2025, I test my capacities once again to Redress by presenting a new application!

‘The Peri-Urbans’ is a very intimate collection. I sketch a concept about myself, my search for identity, and highlight various manufacturers I have the pleasure to collaborate with for their innovative products.
I'd like to honestly introduce myself as both rural and urban, masculine and feminine, industrial and artisanal, but also as a consumer and a designer.

As this collection is both industrial and artisanal, I collaborate across Europe with manufacturers producing innovative recycled materials and traditional natural textiles.

First there are RECOVER and POLOPIQUÉ, a Spanish recycler and a Portuguese textile group. The first one for their recycled fibres shredded from textile waste, used in my collection as wadding. The second one for their innovative recycled fabric to quilt with, in the end resulting in a loop of scalable recycled and recyclable garments.

Then there are VIRGOCOOP and TISSAGES D'AUTAN, French cooperative and traditional weavers whose goal is to reintroduce natural fibres in France, working directly with farmers. I use cut selvedges, woven or stitched to create a unique textured textile, as well as defective linen via zero-waste patterned pieces such as trousers or skirts.

Garments are thought through in order to both consume waste, and become smart waste that can be consumed afterwards.

In a perfect world my dream goal would be to be an artistic director, and develop a brand through the lens of sustainability by collaborating with weavers, labs, engineers, farmers, etc... in order to normalise a new way to create and produce clothes.
I definitely see myself continuing to experiment with eco-friendly techniques, in order to challenge the visual and concrete idea we generally have of what a sustainable garment is, or could be.

Definitely my sketchbook and a pen. Sketching helps me put my imagination onto paper, and study how to accurately translate it. When it comes to collections, I am a rather messy thinker, so sketching everything helps me understand how something can take shape, and mix different concepts together to push its research. I rarely process a project the same, I'll always have an idea of an idea of an idea... and so on. Therefore I need to have drawings and notes in front of me to understand what works and what doesn't, both technically and visually.

I believe it’s important as designers to work with manufacturers — they are actors of our production chain, and direct influences over our environmental impact. They are often overshadowed by designers but it’s crucial to highlight them and the work they do for a greener future.

It’s also with pride that I represent through this collection my region, far from fashion’s capital, but not isolated either. Just like me, it can’t be considered as rural, nor as urban. I do my best to get my work out there, and hope one day I’ll be able to present the accumulated imagination and memories I had there through fashion.

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