A Filipino fashion design student Erika Ng has vowed to make a difference in the sustainable space of the fashion industry through her designs.

Her collection in this year’s Global Design Graduate explores various handmade fabric manipulation’s such as beading and braiding using her own BioPlastik made out of natural raw materials such as water, glycerol and gelatine.

She stated that her goal was to create new plastic material for a sustainable future and hence innovated the BioPlastik. She added that unlike other mass-produced plastics, BioPlastik helps reduce the use of fossil fuels that promotes sustainability as well as feedstock diversification.

Bioplastics are renewable plastic materials made from vegetable fats and oils, straw, wood chips, sawdust, recycled food waste, agriculture by-products and other biological material.

She believes that BioPlastik will not only meet the challenges of the local fashion industry by developing innovative solutions for materials to meet commercial success while promoting social, ecological, and cultural development.

The youthful fashion designer hopes to tackle the environmental problems behind the glamorous fashion industry. She stated that if they merely appreciate the surface without understanding what happens underneath the layers, then people cannot be grateful for the beauty of the things.

The duality in nature-inspired her to promote awareness not just in the industry but also among designers and industrialists alike. She has also captured the landscape and agricultural problems in her collection. 

Her collection features ingenuity and craftsmanship through traditional hand embroidery techniques in representation of the aerial view of Philippine agriculture and rice paddies with innovative yarn embroidery and sewing practices. 

She hopes that through her collection she inspires people to take notice of the hardworking farmers. The Global Design Graduate Show 2020 is an international competition the recognizes the student’s journey across the globe.