My Garment Ethical Statement
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
My initial inspiration came from an assignment brief based on comets and space. I started to pick out words which influenced me such as ‘ineffable alien force’, ‘great change’, ‘derministic universe’, ‘science fiction’, ‘green gas’, ‘cosmological influence’ and ‘green gas’.
All these words led me to build up a theme and select images to inspire my designs. My colourways were immediately recognisable, I looked at lots of metallic greens, silvers and blacks (the colours of aliens and space).
It’s really important to me to incorporate a form of recycling within my designs. Why not create something new from something old? Up-cycling is a great form of eco-fashion, taking old clothes and waste fabric then manufacturing and stitching them into an entirely new garment.
My design is based on recycling things like scarps of materials, rope, old buttons/sequins, clothing and upholstery. I intend on trapping the waste materials between two pieces of fabric in order to create my own beautiful fabric. I think a fascinating factor is that I am changing the use of the item such as a piece of rope from an old children’s climbing frame or a tassle from a curtain tie-back, using them to turn into a my own fabric.
I think recycling is a great way of reducing generated waste and keeping costings low when creating a new garment. Although the garment might me cheap to manufacture, up-cycled clothing doesn’t always come cheap for the consumer.
The great thing about recycling and reusing is that it is one of the greenest fabrics! By using old clothing as a source of new material there is no waste involved in manufacture instead, you are recovering what might otherwise end up in landfills.
I think recycled fashion will become more recognisable on the high-street in the future. Tesco has already launched a recycled clothing collection, collaborating with an ethical fashion label. I would love for recycled clothing and reuse of old fabrics to become more recognisable within the high-street fashion industry. Uzbekistan is one of the largest cotton producing countries, children as young as eleven have been taken out of schools to help harvest the cotton. Many farmers have no choice in the matter but to harvest cotton over fruits and vegetables. Living and working conditions are extremely poor and many are exposed to considerable health risks.
Until the problem starts to get better, working conditions are improved and children are able to return to education, consumers in the UK should be using more up-cycling and recycling within the fashion industry. We take advantage of cheap production and fast fashion where clothes have little lifetime and are disposed of and don’t think about those producing the garments we wear.
