When the Green Sun Rises Marks a Defining Moment as 2025 Rome Design of the Year

Honoured as Design of the Year at the 2025 Rome Design Awards, When the Green Sun Rises by Can Cui offers a deeply personal exploration of identity shaped through colour.

In fashion, colour holds the rare power to transform perception, evoking renewal, emotion and identity in a single glance. It challenges convention, stirs imagination and invites self-expression without the need for words. Within this vibrant creative landscape, When the Green Sun Rises by Can Cui stands out as Design of the Year at the 2025 Rome Design Awards, embodying this transformative spirit. Through an evocative exploration of green, the winning entry reframes the hue as a symbol of growth, individuality and a luminous new chapter in contemporary design.

Through hand dyeing processes that introduce organic variations, and textile manipulation that creates depth and tactility, Can allows the garments to carry emotional nuance within their very fibres. The exploration of colour theory grounds the collection in knowledge and intention, yet it never feels clinical or detached. Instead, technique and storytelling move in harmony, ensuring that each fabric choice and tonal transition contributes to a larger emotional arc.

Within the wider context of fashion, this project serves as a reminder that clothing can hold memory, identity and transformation all at once. Fashion often operates at the intersection of culture and individuality, reflecting collective influences while shaping personal narratives. In When the Green Sun Rises, garments become markers of growth, capturing the quiet yet profound shift from expectation to self-recognition. Can approaches design as a form of self-articulation, demonstrating that empowerment can be expressed not through excess, but through intention, reflection and the courage to define one’s own palette.

By reflecting on a deeply personal process of self-discovery, Can transform the masterpiece into a collection, shaping it into an intimate yet universally resonant narrative. The project stands out for its emotional clarity as much as its technical accomplishment, offering viewers an experience that feels reflective rather than performative.

Through deliberate colour transitions, layered textiles and carefully considered construction, Can allows garments to embody the gradual act of breaking free from inherited expectations. Fabric becomes a quiet site of resistance, where softness carries strength and colour carries conviction. In this way, the act of dressing is elevated into something restorative and self-affirming, suggesting that clothing can serve as an outward expression as well as means of healing, reclamation and personal liberation.

When the Green Sun Rises lingers in the mind long after the first impression, not for spectacle but for sincerity. It succeeds because it feels lived, considered and deeply intentional, demonstrating how fashion can hold vulnerability and strength within the same silhouette. In elevating green from a simple shade to a symbol of renewal and self-definition, Can presents a body of work that resonates beyond the runway or exhibition space. The project stands as a thoughtful reminder that true innovation in fashion often begins within, and that the most powerful statements are those rooted in personal truth, translated with skill, sensitivity and unwavering creative vision!