13 November 2023
Unleash your creativity and celebrate genderless bag designs
Design-A-Bag (DAB) Online Competition, the leather bag designing event for designers and design students worldwide, is pleased to announce the opening of submissions for the 2024 edition. Organized by Fashion Access since 2007, this annual competition aims to foster creativity and highlight the talent of bag designers from diverse backgrounds. The competition offers participants the opportunity to showcase their unique and innovative creations to a global audience of industry professionals
Finalists will be sponsored to attend Fashion Access 2024 in Hong Kong, which is held alongside APLF Leather and Materials+, the most international exhibition for leather and fashion manufacturing industries. The Overall DAB Winner will win a 4-week design course at Arsutoria School in Milan.
The submission deadline is 12 January 2024 (UTC+8 23:59).
Mr Neil Bryan Capistrano, DAB 2022 Winner, attended design course at Arsutoria School
2024 Competition Theme :
GENDERLESS
From casual Unisex to extravagant today’s life: “to appear today is to exist in the eyes of the others.”
The fashion World has showed a rising trend for genderless designs, allowing consumers to dress outside of one’s gender. Popularly labelled as androgynous fashion, it is veering away from traditional gender labels. Over the last few decades, women are taking inspiration from men’s fashion. Today, menswear is increasingly influenced by women’s fashion, particularly the bags that are used both by men, women, etc.
With gender-neutral or gender-inclusive designs in mind, DAB 2024 challenges designers to create the ultimate genderless bag, with leather as its main material. It will be a bag whose form and function will appeal to any and every gender.
2024 Design Direction:
1. Leather, what else? Genuine leather must be used…
and can be complemented by other natural or non-leather materials.
2. Look for inspirations and fashion indicators from archives to explore iconic bag designs for the future
Break the existing rules that had navigated us in the past years. Discover new materials and structures for your bag design. Participants can get inspiration from APLF 2024/25 Fall-Winter Material Trends.
Please visit here for more competition guidelines.
Prizes include:
2023 Overall winner
The Design-A-Bag Competition 2023 successfully concluded during APLF Dubai 2023, with Ms Moyang Yang from the UK as the Winner. Her winning design, the CARE Bag symbolises style, equality and the environment, crocheted with soft yarn as women’s dark hair, and lined with nappa leather to represent the inner strength.
Ms Moyang Yang and her winning bag – the CARE Bag
Finalists
Autumn Leaves, Grete Prost-Kängsepp (Estonia)
The Possibility of a Circle – The Extension, Yu Lun Lu (Taiwan)
Online Favourite Design:
Perlas, Ivan Cedric Fabia (Philippines)
Click here to watch the design concepts of the finalists.
We bring leather, material and fashion businesses together: an opportunity to meet and greet face to face. We bring them from all parts of the world so that they can find fresh partners, discover new customers or suppliers and keep ahead of industry developments.
We organise a number of trade exhibitions which focus on fashion and lifestyle: sectors that are constantly in flux, so visitors and exhibitors alike need to be constantly aware both of the changes around them and those forecast for coming seasons.
