Textile graduates win inaugural Tengri Innovation Award 2018

London design house Tengri, a luxury fashion and lifestyle brand, has announced that designer Henrietta Johns has won its inaugural Tengri Innovation Award, launched this year to encourage the implementation of sustainable fashion and textiles working towards a more sustainable industry standard and future.

Henrietta John’s work is rooted in a deep exploration of natural animal fibres and innovative designs using traditional felting techniques, creating new fabric surfaces with 100% animal fibre.

Henrietta Johns, who graduated this year from London's Central Saint Martin with a First Class honours degree in Textile Design, specialising in woven textiles, was in Paris in September as one of the 24 finalists of TexSelect 2018 who showed in the Première Vision Designs - one of the main events of Première Vision Paris. 

Photos shown here are designs from Henrietta's "The Exploration of Wool" collection that was shown in the PV Designs in Paris as she aims to raise the profile of British wool as a sustainable fibre for contemporary, innovative apparel, opposing it’s traditional connotations.  Each design is visually inspired by rural British landscape, as well as farming scenery and practices, in correlation with the prospect of increased business for independent British farmers. Each fabric is composed of 100% British wool, natural dyes and natural sheep’s fleece colourings.

Last year Henrietta was the winner of another competition sponsored by jacquard weaver Stephen Walters & Sons.  This led to her developing innovative fabrics that featured in their A/W 18 menswear collection at the prestigious Premier Vision Paris fair in 2017, as well as production of a bespoke jacket for Turnball & Asser as part of its dedication to ‘the new generation of design’.

Henrietta Johns developed her own techniques to accentuate the natural qualities of wool to create innovative textures and surfaces, such as playing with the idea of contrasting shrinkages when pairing different fibres that felt and shrink differently.

As winner of the Tengri Innovation Award, Henrietta receives a one-year mentorship with Tengri, as well as a six-month paid internship supported with Tengri Noble Yarns for production and a cash prize.
The Tengri Innovation Award was open to final-year students of the Tengri Innovation Partnership, an initiative which includes some of the UK’s most influential academic and creative institutions. Designers were invited to present innovative and sustainable approaches to textiles, to meet criteria set to demonstrate forward-thinking conceptualisation of sustainable fibres and practices that rework cultural and traditional techniques. Critically, these practices would be set to demonstrate the preservation of heritage in fabrication, construction and production.

Three runners-up in the Tengri Innovation Award is each awarded Tengri Noble Yarns, fabrics and cash prizes and will be invited to join the Tengri design collective working on the brief for Tengri’s 2019/20 collection.  They are:
·       Christopher Ehrlich, graduate of Central Saint Martins’ BA Fashion Design Menswear, accredited for his conscientious approach to sustainability with ‘zero off-cut’ pattern cutting, reinventing a traditional tailoring technique used in the early 1900s.
·       Cecile Tulkens, graduate of Central Saint Martins’ BA Fashion Design with Knitwear, for her ability to combine traditional and industrial techniques, incorporating an ancient form of crocheting originated in Belgium into her work.
·       Zoe Atkinson, graduate of University of the Arts London, BA Textile Design, with her amour-like knitwear combining natural materials such as leather skins, wood and soft woolen textures, to create an inventive outlook of future materiality.

Since 2014 Tengri has championed the sustainable design and manufacturing of prestige noble yarns and was the first technology specialist to refine Khangai yak yarns in the UK.  Rare Mongolian yak fibres from the Khangai yaks are as soft as cashmere, warmer than merino wool, breathable and hypoallergenic, via a 100% transparent supply chain.   Tengri is listed in the Sustania100 2016 guide as one of the world’s leading sustainable business solutions, and its founder, Nancy Johnston, was presented with the Asian Women of Achievement Entrepreneur Award 2016.

Photos supplied by Tengri.