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Wong Also Won Audi Star Creation 2012 Spot
Roderic Wong (C) receives the Audi Star Creation Award
A year after fellow Shanghainese designer Uma Wang won Audi’s Progressive Designer Award, this week China’s Roderic Wong (Wang Liang) won the Audi Young Designer Award 2012 in Singapore. As part of his award, which is given to “the Audi Star Creation winner whose creations best embody the Audi design spirit of innovation, technology and progression,” Wong won an additional cash prize of S$10,000 (US$7,895) for his collection, “Tissue of Being.”
Wong’s win at the Star Creation competition marks the third in a row for a Chinese designer, but this year marks first-time wins for Thailand, with designer Soravit Kaewkamon, and South Korea, with Ko Youngji. The winners of the Star Creation contest 2012, which stand on equal footing rather than being ranked, were chosen from a record 255 entries from 13 countries (far more than last year’s 144 contestants). This year’s judges included Reinhold Carl, Managing Director of Audi Singapore, Colin McDowell, Creative Director of the Audi Fashion Festival 2012, Mario Boselli, President of the Italian Chamber of Fashion and Milan Fashion Week, and Angelia Teo, Content Director, Asia Pacific, WGSN.
Design by Roderic Wong
At the runway competition, Wong’s work bowled over the seven judges, who remarked that they were impressed at the speed with which Wong created his collection — which took less than one month from start to finish. As Audi’s Carl said, “I really like how [Wong] developed a whole new material for his collection. His designs had such clean lines and were not overloaded.”
Tossing in a sales pitch for good measure, Carl added, “Those are similar principles that Audi believes when developing our cars. We are always looking for new materials and to create a style that is timeless and elegant. That is why we felt he best encapsulated the spirit of the Audi Young Designer Award.”
As Douglas Benjamin, Chief Executive Office of FJ Benjamin Singapore Pte Ltd and Co-Creative Director of Raoul, said of Wong’s collection, “We all loved the fact that he developed his own fabric. As far as design goes, he had a minimalist point of view, but it was extremely interesting.” Added fellow judge and VP of the Textile & Fashion Federation (Singapore), David Wang, the collection “exuded sophistication and looked international.”
Roderic Wong and model
For those who didn’t see the runway show earlier this week in Singapore, Wong’s collection will be shown again alongside those by second- and third-place Star Creation winners at the Audi Star Creation Showcase on May 18. In addition, last year’s winners — Chen Zhigang, from China, Tiang Boon Tieon, from Malaysia and Singapore’s Tsai Ming Hung — will show off their new capsule collections, created over the past year under the mentorship of FJ Benjamin.
For any other young designers hoping to enter the Audi Star Creation 2013, the call for entries will open this November, and the deadline for submissions will be January 31, 2013.