Fashion Designer
Award Announcement
At the mmode 2025 Gala — Montréal Fashion Cluster honoured Juan Iskandar as a finalist in two categories:
Growth & Resilience, which honours designers who turned uncertainty into strength.
Technological Transformation rewards those rethinking how fashion gets made.
About the mmode Gala
mmode — Montréal Fashion Cluster — is the non-profit federating Québec's fashion industry: designers, manufacturers, wholesaler-distributors, and retailers. It builds business and innovation synergies and drives international competitiveness across the ecosystem. As deputy manager Gautier Berlemont put it: "This year 2025 celebration reflects the remarkable evolution of Quebec's fashion ecosystem — from bold innovation in sustainable materials, to our emerging talent pipeline, to the growing global footprint of our designers."
The Proposal and Its Heart
Both nominations stem from COCOON 2025, submitted under Juan Iskandar's positioning as anew emerging designer in Montreal. One question started it all: what if a garment isn't a finished product — but a living cycle? COCOON answers everything KOH Montreal stands for. Zero-waste cutting. GOTS-certified organic textiles. Recycled-bottle fabrics. Each piece is anchored by Indonesian heritage techniques. Garments that wrap, protect, and transform — Tenun weaves carry ancestral narratives, Barong motifs stitch spiritual protection into sustainable cloth. Every centimetre is accounted for. Nothing wasted. On the tech side, Juan rebuilt his supply chain from scratch — Québec-based artisan partnerships, hyper-local production replacing international dependency, and a twenty-percent cost reduction through material innovation, not labour exploitation. Slow fashion. Sharp operations. Both juries noticed.
Relevance
Juan launched mid-pandemic, sourced ethically through locked-down supply chains, and made scarcity his creative fuel. He has rethought how fashion gets made — zero-waste cutting, recycled-bottle textiles, a circular model built on resale, rental, and repair.
As a finalist in two categories, one story is blended: a Borneo-born, Bali-raised, Montreal-rooted designer proving an emerging house that can compete on creative ambition and operational ethics at the same time.