The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) is launching a new contest for fashion designers from across the globe, to harness their creative talents to fight prejudice, foster interfaith tolerance, and help build a better world free of antisemitism.

From the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s to present-day social justice activism, fashion is a proven tool of change. Clothing and fashion accessories have long been used to convey political messages on the street and publicly identify with and advocate for greater causes.

In recent years, unfortunately, anti-Zionists on college campuses have used fashion to advance their agenda of hate. There have also been numerous items sold online bearing Holocaust-era symbols, such as yellow “Juden” stars, or anti-Israel slogans, such as “Make Israel Palestine Again.”

As Jew-hatred surges around the world, CAM is inviting you to join an artistic initiative to turn the tables and inspire a fashion uprising with fresh transformative trends that spread messages against Jew-hatred and bigotry of all forms.

If you are a designer looking for a career-launching opportunity, you are invited to join the “Strike a Pose Against Hate: The Hedy Strnad Fashion Design Contest,” and have a chance of winning up to $15,000.

The Hedy Strnad Fashion Design Contest offers you the opportunity to submit entries in three categories, each with a top winner and up to five runners-up, all of whom will receive cash prizes to help develop their products. A judging committee consisting of a group of professional experts from both the fashion and advocacy worlds will be established by CAM to determine the winners and runners-up. Your entries will be assessed for their innovativeness and potential impact, and the competition will run for several months to allow for global participation.

Our expectations:

We expect each participant to express their artistic and creative talent in an original piece matching one of the categories below. The piece should be fashionable, aesthetic, and unique. The purpose of the contest is to help fashion maintain its historic role as an effective method for promoting impactful social change. Therefore we are looking for participants able to find ways of delivering their messages, through their art, in an intelligent and nuanced manner.

How does it work?

1. Choose the category that best fits you:

• “Accessories of Change”: Submit an entry that is a fashion accessory (such as hats, gloves, shoes, jewelry, belts, bags, scarves, etc.) designed to feature visual messaging against antisemitism and turn heads on the street.
• “The Power of Print”: Submit an entry that is a clothing print people can wear (i.e. on t-shirts, which are a highly-visible platform), that includes images and texts educating people about interfaith coexistence or highlighting a symbol synonymous with the global campaign against antisemitism.
• “A Piece for Peace”: Submit an entry that is an original runway piece — with the idea it could be featured in a future fashion show – that, through creative production techniques and use of materials, manifests inclusion and intercultural solidarity, and makes people question their preexisting notions about Jew-hatred.

2. Think about an idea you would like to submit in the category.

3. Take the time to design

4. Submit your entry before February 1st, 2022 here: https://bit.ly/3hQpi2V

5. Our expert committee will determine which submissions will earn prizes.

If you like to discuss your idea with us please reach out at: combatantisemtism.org/fashion

Who Was Hedy Strnad?

The contest is named in memory of Hedy Strnad, a female dressmaker from Czechoslovakia, who perished at Theresienstadt, a ghetto and concentration camp established by the SS during World War II. Before World War II, Strnad was a gifted and admired fashion designer in Prague. While she and her husband Paul unsuccessfully sought to flee Nazi-occupied Europe and ended up being murdered in the Holocaust, design sketches of hers that were included in a letter sent to a relative in America before the war were miraculously found in Wisconsin a half-century later. These designs were subsequently brought to life by the Milwaukee Jewish Museum, forever enshrining Strnad’s fashion legacy.

Read the rules to join the contest: https://combatantisemitism.org/hedy-strnad-fashion-design-contest-rules/