Meet the green fashion innovators

DEDI Green Gate 2023 is well underway – with 24 selected green fashion entrepreneurs, scholars and innovators  from Denmark and Egypt are set to meet, exchange and be inspired throughout the year.

To address the fashion industry’s impact of 8-10 pct annual carbon emission of carbon globally, DEDI Green Gate 2023 aims to foster collaboration, promote dialogue and explore solutions.

The 24 selected participants have already taken steps toward this, be it using eco-friendly raw materials, upcycling, increasing the longevity of products by reusing and advocating for slow fashion. Throughout the programme in 2023, the Egyptian and Danish participants will get together for local meetings and two international workshops in Copenhagen and Cairo respectively.

Meet the participants who are each in their own way re-shaping the fashion industry and getting ready to meet, engage and collaborate.

Agnes Saaby Thomsen

Agnes Saaby is a fashion designer working with creating big bold silhouettes using unconventional materials. One of the materials Agnes works with is discarded film banners from local cinemas. After the film finishes screening in the cinema, Agnes collects the banners and turns them into shirts, skirts, jackets, bags and dresses. The individual film banners make each creation unique as well as making use of a material otherwise thrown out. Agnes has a Bachelor and master’s degree in fashion from the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen.

Ali Abdelwahab

Ali Abdelwahab is a student studying renewable energy engineering and is the founder of Areni a sustainable fashion startup that creates clothing and footwear from recycled materials.

Annabell Arguimbau

Annabell Arguimabau is a double degree master’s student studying fashion management and design set to graduate in July 2023. She is also a self-taught designer and pattern maker. She has worked on several projects such as designing handbags in Peru, restoration of vintage luxury clothing in France and university projects with business strategy design for Moncler in Italy.

Basant Raouf

 Bassant Raouf is a professional fashion designer with seven years of experience designing womenswear (casual, evening, and bridal) as well as menswear. She is also a fashion content creator on platforms such as Youtube, Instagram, Facebook and Tiktok. Bassant obtained her bachelor’s degree in applied arts from Helwan University with a major in apparel design.

Cecil Sturich

Cecilie Sturich is a design technologist from Copenhagen School of Design and Technology (KEA) and a collector of archival designer fashion. She is currently studying for BSc in Innovation & Entrepreneurship specialising in circular economy and sustainability at Zealand Academy of Technologies & Business. She is the chairwoman of DSR (The Student Council) & The Party Committee at her business academy as well as a DESO board member. Through her studies, her current focus is designing a rebranding/marketing strategy for LifeDesignCircle – a company built on the methodology of Design Thinking focusing on the personal wellbeing of Millenials, aiding the ESG responsible at a party supplies wholesales company implementing a sustainability strategy. She is also designing a range of eco-friendly accessories from upcycled denim fabrics to ultimately reach an eco-label product certification.

Ditte Marie Pallesen

Ditte Marie Pallesen is studying to become a design engineer in Sustainable Design at Aalborg University Copenhagen. As a child she dreamt of working in the fashion industry until she learned about its polluting production, so she went in a different direction hoping an engineering approach can be a way to create solutions.

Hadeer Abdel Moniem

Hadeer Abdel Moniem is an Egyptian fashion designer and co-founder of Owly. As a ready-to-wear fashion brand, the main goal of Owly is to help women feel different, confident & comfortable. The vision of the brand is to play a role in women’s self expression journey every day by providing transformable garments that each woman can wear in her own way. By designing the same piece to be styled differently to be suitable for various occasions, it helps more people adopt the concept of slow fashion.

Indrė Žvirzdytė

Indrė is Lithuanian fashion designer and artist based in Denmark, with a specialisation in knitwear design. She holds a masters degree in Design for Plant from the Design school in Kolding. Her designs are based on upcycling textile waste, secondhand and non-conventional materials through craftsmanship and creating artistic garment pieces with sustainability in mind. She has been in collaborations with several fashion brands in Denmark, creating holistic design systems, developing clothes & accessories, prints and knitwear. Nature, music and art are the main inspiration for her, creating stories with her designs and art.

Hadeer Shalaby

Hadeer Shalaby is the founder and CEO of Green Fashion. After graduating as an electrical engineer she shifted careers and studied Business and Entrepreneurship at Kelly School of Business. Green Fashion was established with the mission to create sustainable fashion that supports the local community of women in a village in Monoufia in Egypt’s delta region using waste materials produced by clothing factories and discarded garments. So far, Green Fashion has provided 200 job opportunities for 200 women in green fashion production units and up-cycled 600 tons of waste. At Green Fashion they are also working on “smart” recycling bins that use clean energy solar panels to encourage more people to use its Garment Collecting initiative and donate their old clothes instead of getting rid of them unsafely. When people put their waste into the bin, their donation will be weighed, and a real-time tally of the donation will be presented on-screen alongside a QR code. This code can then be scanned by shoppers to receive a 15% discount to spend with green fashion online store, as well as some points and services.

Josefina Enevold

Josefina Enevold is a textile designer based in Copenhagen. She has both bachelors and masters degrees from the Royal Danish Academy specialised in textile and print design. Josefina is working on a project to reuse handwoven textiles from the Nordic countries that end up at flea markets and create new unique textiles from them. She wants to show that you can make something beautiful and poetic out of the textiles that already exist, and get more people to appreciate and use them. Handicrafts that have been passed down through generations have great cultural and historical significance and are meaningful to us as individuals and to our society. With this mindset, Josefina wants to challenge her methods and approaches in her artistic work and give textiles a second life, work with materials and textiles that are unique, highlight them and pass them on to several generations.

Mariam Fayyad

Mariam is the co-founder of Sol’mare, where they design and produce simple, colourful summer clothing pieces using sustainable linen fabric. Mariam decided to turn her passion for fashion into reality in 2020 when she and her partner established Sol’mare while they were finishing their bachelors degree. All their pieces are handmade by local craftsman in Cairo, where they produce a very limited number of pieces to reduce and limit waste as much as possible. Aside from the business, Mariam is also a Project Planning Engineer at JLL (Jones Lang LaSalle). She has a bachelors degree in Civil Engineering from the German University in Cairo majoring in Construction Management.

Nanna B. Graversen

Nanna B. Graversen is a freelance fashion & knitwear designer. After Graduating The Swedish School of Textiles with a Masters of Fine Arts specialized in sustainable knitwear for Fashion, Nanna Started her company WhyWaste? Because, why is anything considered waste in a world where our resources are depleted at an incomprehensibly fast rate? Nanna designs and develops knitwear, both under her own name, and for other fashion companies. Staying true to her sustainability goals of avoiding virgin materials under her own designs, and designing for longevity and made to last when designing and consulting for others. Nanna hopes to see a future where the designers are a larger part of developing fashion for a more sustainable future. As sustainability is just another challenge which can be solved creatively through better designs, using less material and understanding the holistic life cycle of garments.

Mostafa Magdy

Mostafa Magdy is an environmental activist from Cairo, Egypt. He is also a content creator and a podcaster who is trying to find solutions for individuals to fight climate change and over consumption and to lead a sustainable lifestyle. After starting his journey towards promoting sustainable living five years ago, he is now working to start on ground activities to raise awareness about sustainable fashion among young people and give them space to participate and experience that through several events.

Nina Balstrup Jørgensen

Nina Balstrup is a fashion designer with both a bachelors and masters degree from the Royal Danish Academy specialising in womenswear. Nina has a big love of all things colour, glitter and humor and has, since she graduated, applied this in small scale projects with a focus on working with second hand textiles. Nina sources potential materials from backyard dumpsters, charity shops and recycling centers in her local area, in an effort to use what’s already made. The practice is often done in an intuitive way, where potential is seen in a material and will define what the new garment will turn into.

Omnia Ahmed

Omnia Ahmed is a 3D fashion designer and stylist with three years of experience in the fashion industry. She majored in fashion and apparel design and received her bachelor’s degree from Helwan University’s faculty of applied arts. In addition to designing the whole casual line for four Egyptian and Jordanian businesses (Azha, Diva, Werzigo and Kimonat), she also produced a uniform collection for 20 schools for ASM Group and took part in more than 70 e-commerce style photo shoots for Tukit and Darza. Also, she has three years of content writing experience and produces 32 new pieces of content each month on various subjects such as fashion, beauty, and lifestyle.

Odette Tcharles El-Hayek

Odette El-Hayek was born in Bulgaria from bulgarian and lebanese descent and moved to Denmark to pursue AP Fashion Design education in 2014, followed by a bachelors degree in Business Innovation. She is currently looking forward to start a masters degree in Fashion Design. She has been working as a freelance designer with VILA clothes, La Rouge Denasia Joint Venture and has won second place in the circular design challenge at the Copenhagen Fashion Week in 2022.

Reham Mohamed Abdelsalam 

Reham Mohamed graduated from the Faculty of applied arts specializing in printing, dyeing, and finishing. She is the workshop manager of Chagara Textiles Printing, who make block printing using natural dyes. She manages the whole production process, develops the designs of textiles, and works to create new dyes from natural materials such as herbs and plant roots.

Sally Bjerre Gaarde

Sally Bjerre Gaarde is a fashion designer with a bachelors degree from Kolding School of Design. With a deep interest in conceptual fashion design, based on theory, research and craftsmanship, she works curiously and critically within the fields of art and fashion, always with an off-set in the sustainability issues we face as system and industry. Through upcycling of discarded materials, she creates unique pieces that hold the story of a previous life as well as the values of time and craft.

Salah Ghanem

Salah Ghanem is a social entrepreneur and co-founder of Buttonup Social Enterprise, with over seven years of experience working in the development sector in Egypt. Salah is passionate about influencing and changing local communities through entrepreneurship. He holds a bachelors degree in Political Science from Cairo University and a Master’s degree in Gender and Development from Cairo University, and a diploma in M&E from the American University in Cairo. Through Buttonup, Salah works to economically support women and youth in Egypt’s most impoverished areas. He believes in creating a better world through the power of entrepreneurship and community development.

Sara Abdelsamie

Sara Abdelsamie is an architect with a masters degree in Interior Design from Milan, Italy. Her passion for fashion led her to create MAMA’S KNITS, a brand inspired by her mother’s artistic knitting skills. As an advocate for sustainability, Sara is dedicated to sourcing sustainable materials and celebrates the slow fashion movement. Her vision is to create a high-end brand that empowers women with knitting skills, while also promoting hand-made craftsmanship, creativity, and sustainability. With her expertise in design and her commitment to ethical and socially responsible practices, Sara is determined to create a better future for the fashion industry.

Sofie Piil Grau

Sofie Piil Grau is a fashion and textile designer studying for a masters degree at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen. She is experimenting with different materials and mediums. She is investigating what it means to live together with and in a living world. She is very interested in the human-nature relationship and believes that we need a new narrative and focus by placing earth first. She wants to make clothes that are placing humans in nature, not above it. She believes that there is a lot to learn through the bodily experience of craftsmanship, listening and experimenting.

Sara Saad

Sara Saad is the founder of Zakeia, a high quality slow fashion brand, upcycling haute-couture leftover fabric to create limited edition pieces. Each piece is hand-made to order in their atelier in Cairo, in order to reduce stock waste. Sara received her master’s degree in Entrepreneurship from Imperial College London and worked as a consultant in London for a year. However, her passion for fashion and obsession with high quality fabric, has led her to the path of starting Zakeia, with the mission of reducing waste in the industry.

Soha Afifi 

Soha Afifi is a fashion researcher, academic instructor, and freelance designer with almost a decade of experience studying and teaching fashion design. She holds a master’s degree in fashion design, and she is currently pursuing a PhD in fashion sustainability. Her PhD project revolves around introducing innovative design and technological solutions for more sustainable swimwear, with a key focus on SDG goal #12 regarding Responsible Consumption and Production. Through extensive research, Soha has explored the underlying reasons behind clothing overconsumption, especially concerning swimwear. She aims to provide alternative sustainable solutions that will help extend the lifespan of swimwear. Soha is committed to experimenting with various sustainable materials and improving the physical and emotional durability of swimwear. She also seeks to explore swimwear recyclability and promote inclusivity and diversity through design.

Youssre Abdelkader

Cairo-based Youssre Abdelkader is the Creative Director of Almah, a social enterprise under the umbrella of the Egyptian Clothing Bank (ECB). Its core pillars stand on circularity, innovation, social responsibility, creativity and education. With the unique and highly diverse resources originating from excess materials provided by ECB, her various design languages and unique approach to sustainability were implemented through upcycling material into womenswear, and eventually installations. Her style revolves around a combination of culturally rooted and interactive designs. Some of Youssre’s biggest achievements over the years was representing ECB and Almah during COP27 showcasing her latest collection. She also won second place in the Cairo Design Awards with her “Foe-Fur” capsule collection in which she focused on fabric manipulation to create eco-friendly, fur-like textures. The latest milestone in her career was co-creating From Waste To Good Taste, a sustainable design initiative. The project aims to raise awareness on conscious methods of design, production, and consumption, bringing together and displaying the works of creative innovators across Cairo.

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