Ji Won Choi for Adidas wins Fashion Design of the Year

Designs Museum's Designs of the Year 2019 winners have been announced and emerging designer Ji Won Choi has won the coveted fashion category for her “fresh and bold” capsule collection with Adidas Originals.

The Beazley Designs of the Year awards, which celebrates original and exciting products, concepts and designers across the globe today features numerous categories including fashion, transport, graphics, digital and architecture.

The fashion category for 2019 was varied and highlighted the "most transcendent and cutting-edge fashion,” explained the Design Museum, including a jewellery range with a sense of humour, a swimwear line for all body shapes, costumes for an Oscar-winning film, a floating knit dress, a pair of vegan flip flips, a modelling agency for everyday beauty, a collection celebrating west African textile, a streetwear collection address race in the US, modified apparel for people with disabilities, as well as meme-worthy couture fashion.

In the end, judges felt that the streetwear collection designed by Ji Won Choi for Adidas Originals, which showcased during London Fashion Week was the standout fashion design of the year, praising her for drawing inspiration from her Korean roots, as well as using a striking palette of lilac, red, navy and green to reinvent the brand’s iconic three-stripe motif.

On why Choi won, Melissa Hajj, 2019 judge and director, product design, Facebook said in a statement: “This collection won because it is using a traditional design language in a new way. It’s a rare thing – a genuinely interesting and fresh take on sportswear. It plays with proportion and is a wonderful use of pattern cutting. A very cool collaboration.”

The overall winner of Beazley Designs of the Year went to infographic and research project ‘Anatomy of an AI System’ by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler which explores the social and environmental impact of owning a voice assistant device.

Other winners include Muji and Sensible 4’s ‘self-driving’ bus for all weather conditions, Catch, a low-cost HIV detector, and a school library in Kopargaon, north-east of Mumbai in India.

Images: courtesy of the Design Museum by Felix Speller