ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Above is a picture of me when I first learned about sustainable fashion and the harms of the fashion industry. It was at an event in New York City held by Querencia Studios, a sustainable fashion brand. Prior to attending this event, I had no idea how harmful the fashion industry was, or what sustainable fashion was. Since then, I have written an inquiry essay about the topic and delivered a speech about it. This project is meant to build on my past research.

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Central Question

How can you up-cycle old clothes in order to start buying fewer new clothes so that you can lessen your fashion-related environmental footprint?

Literature

Drawing from my past work on this topic, I have many different informative sources that were used to inform my project and my audience about the harms of the fashion industry. One that I find particularly helpful is The global environmental injustice of fast fashion, by Rachel Bick and others. I like this source so much because it gives a good explanation of why the fashion industry is so harmful in its water usage, chemical usage, and landfill space usage. It also explains that fashion consumers in high income countries, such as the United States, have an important role to play in reducing the environmental harms of the fashion industry. The article specifically states that consumers can help by "repairing clothing they already own," which is the entire basis of my project (Bick, et al.). In addition to informative sources like this one, I used various tutorials on Youtube, Tiktok, and Pinterest as influence sources to help me with inspiration for my up-cycles. I found that Tiktok was extremely helpful as there are many content creators who post short video tutorials explaining how to up-cycle clothes. For example, one of my pieces was a up-cycle using an old t-shirt. The video was posted by @jysellehug and it was a super quick, easy up-cycle that is perfect for the viewers of my project who prefer not to sew or don't know how to (Hug). These tutorials gave me ideas and inspiration throughout the semester. 

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Methods

Going into this project, I had already done some research on the topic, so I was mostly just adding to and developing that research. My research on creative platforms was the most fun for me because I found that there are so many creatives out there posting their work in super fun and interesting ways.Tiktok actually became one of the more useful platforms for me. A lot of my semester was spent in the idea and practice phase. I had to practice different methods, such as bleach dyeing and others, to find out which ones work best, and which ones I want to include in my project.

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Audience & Impact

I knew going into this project that I wanted my audience to be people my age. I chose this specific audience because we are generally the ones who are buying lots of cheap clothing and buying it often in order to stay stylish and trendy. My goal for my project is for people my age to see that there are ways to stay on-trend without necessarily having to buy new clothes. While I know that I may not be able to fully change the habits of my audience, I hope I can at least get them thinking about it, and maybe trying a few up-cycles for themselves. Completing my capstone project was actually a little therapeutic for me, which is interesting because Art Therapy is the workshop that I participated in last year. I found that having a project that forced me to take time out of my day for art was actually really nice. 

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References

Bick, Rachel; Halsey, Erika; Ekenga, Christine C. The global environmental injustice of fast fashion. Environmental Health, 2018.

@jysellehug "My first tutorial sorry if it's confusing, hope it helps x" Tik Tok, 11 April. 2021, https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeuaqVu2/

Howell, Beth. Top 7 Most Polluting Industries. The Eco Experts, Updated 29 April. 2021.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Heather Bremenstuhl, Harold Burgess, and Gabrielle Tillenburg for guiding me through my project as well as through my time here at Arts Scholars.