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Vision Thinking, Meaning, & Form, February 8 2017
Perserving Materials Through Repurposing Fashion Nicole Anicetti Pavithra Ramamurthy James Walsh Sanchit Soni School of Informatics and Computing Indiana University 901 S. 10th St. Bloomington, IN, 47408, USA
Abstract
Fashion consumerism has been an increasing mentality and problem throughout the Western world. With this accelerated pace of consumerism, the demand for resources and use of materials has also increased. The purpose of this pictorial is to explore a world of repurposing fashion to preserve its resources instead of wasting them. We imagine a community-based program that helps people utilize donated or discarded clothes, to create new items. The series of photographs depict a theme of repurposing fashion in a community setting.
Background
Fashion is an enormous industry that influences and affects people all around the world. Just last year in 2016, the fashion industry was valued at 3 trillion dollars [1]. Magazines, websites, and social media are just a few of mediums that encourage this type of ‘fashion fever’ behavior. Fashion designers and department stores quickly turn around new items and trends to update their inventory. Many people adhere to this industry since they want to “follow trends in order to keep up with social change.” [2] The problem with this consumer mentality is the inevitable use of more resources to create this fashion. The United State’s EPA department reported that on average, Americans “throw away more than 68 pounds of clothing and textiles” per year [3]. Although the trends in consumerism and waste seem like prominent aspects of American practices, it’s crucial to put more importance on a more environmentally friendly culture.
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In recent years, more research has advocated for this type of environmentally conscious behavior. In 2012, Yue Pan argued “is it possible to embrace fashion as a fundamentally human predisposition in a way that is in harmony with the need to ensure a sustainable future?” [2] Ekstrom and Salomon discuss this possible union between fashion and sustainability further with the notions of reuse and recycle. [4] They define reuse as “the use of the original product function” and mention that “reuse and recycle can prolong product usage and material life cycles.” [4] There are many second hand stores, online DIY tutorials and even fashion shows that promote reuse of materials [15]. However this is often in a setting that promotes reuse on an individual level. Ekstrom and Salomon advocate for attention towards a macromarketing approach towards reuse, saying “A macromarketing perspective, involving different actors in society, is necessary in order to make consumption more sustainable and for finding long-term solutions.” [4] This larger scale approach has been incorporated in an upcycling wool campaign with the FABlab Namibia Technology Centre. They worked with swakara sheep farmers, stakeholders and even graffiti artists to develop an art exhibit that depicts waste repurposing in a tangible manner. [5] With this in mind, and with the established Bloomington Bike Community Project, we propose a community engagement approach to repurposing fashion. Instead of
Vision Thinking, Meaning, & Form, February 8 2017
continuing with a common practice of purchasing new clothes, especially following trends of ‘fast fashion’ [6], or disposing of unwanted clothing we attempted to create a new fashion practice. We hope to encourage people to begin a cycleof donation and repurposing of their material goods.
Context
In the Bloomington area we’ve learned that although there is a healthy presence of second-hand businesses, these businesses have strict restrictions to the clothes they take into their inventory. They do not sell or trade worn out, damaged, or stained clothes. The majority of the second hand stores we visited deal with Vintage clothing, which already has an established niche audience. In our research, we found out people sometimes demand specific types of apparel and accessories from 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Henceforth, these vintage stores cater to those customers, or to ones who want to wear premium luxury brands but find it difficult to afford them. Our aim to preserving life is specifically concerned with repurposing clothes which are 1) worn-out 2) not necessarily categorized as vintage 3) are not necessarily high end items. As an exemplar, we visited the Bloomington Bike Project, which is an initiative to create a community-run facility for repairing, building and donating bikes amongst residents and bike enthusiasts in Bloomington.
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Vision Thinking, Meaning, & Form, February 8 2017
Building on Exisitng Concepts Volunteers work together on bike tires in the front yard of project site. If any volunteer contributes three hours of working towards building a bike, they are eligble to take that bike home.
Figure 1. Bloomington’s Community Bike Project
This is Jim’s bike which he donated to the Bloomington bike project. Upon donation, donors can also receive tax benefits.
Figure 2. Example of a volunteer’s bike
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Existing Reuse Practices in the Area
Figure 3. Inside the bike shop Storage unit of the Bloomington Bike Project. People can also purchase the donated bikes, which are sold at a reduced price.
Figure 4. Inside Cherry Canary The passage on the floor was made with old magazine spreads glued on the finish. Cherry Canary exhibits many of such makeshift and cleverly repurposed interior elements.
Figure 5. Mannequin Modeling A store owner mentioned that people mostly come to buy entire collection. If they are buying a skirt, they would want another item to go with that skirt. People mostly look for combinations rather than standalone articles.
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Concept We contemplated on the idea and decided to present a design proposal which would work on similar lines of the Bike Project, except for clothes. This community facility, called Material Garden, will be a place where artisans, residents and apparel enthusiasts can come, engage, participate and learn about fashion. They can stitch and create new articles from old and discarded fashion items and exchange ideas for sustainable, purposeful fashion. The pictorials are a detailed depiction of how the entire operation would run.
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Figure 6. The store name
Material Garden would receive such bags of discarded clothes either donated by the community or discarded by businesses. The image depicts two people choosing which material they would like to use. The fabric could come from a variety of different items such as home goods or clothing.
Figure 7: Picking which fabric to use
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Figure 8: Assembling the material
In Figure 8, Pavithra demonstrates a piece of cloth which could be easily be used to repurpose a different kind of fashion accessory. The background shows the equipment needed to make such kinds of accessories, such as a long work table. Creators and fashion enthusiasts should have access to appropriate tools and equipments, to make and quickly see their designs. In Figure 9, Nicole demonstrating on how a mannequin would be used to measure the design of a new apparel.
Figure 9: Fittings and measurements
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Examples of available tools in the community project
Figure 10: Sewing tools available on site
The facility would be a creative lab, which would provide the community with the tools they need to repurpose and upcycle materials. Tools to sew anything, even beyond apparel, would be available. Pictured here is a pin cushion made from scrap material.
Figure 11: Sewing Machine
A sewing machine at the facility. This is a further example of such kind of tools and machines will be required at the facility to stitch and sew different fabrics into meaningful items.
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Encouraging Community Involvement and Engagement
Figure 12: The workshop
Figure 13: Mentor helping others
Material Garden’s community facility will be a place where artisans, residents and apparel enthusiasts can come, engage, participate and learn about fashion. They can stitch and create new articles from old and discarded fashion items and exchange ideas for sustainable, purposeful fashion.
Material Garden could be used for teaching design to younger population and everyone else who is interested in learning about repurposing fashion. Creating awareness in the process.
Figure 14: Working together People can come up with their own set of design ideas and work on their projects, whether it is hand stitching, sewing, tie dying or simply experimenting with different fabrics. 8
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Figure 16: Potential Designs
Figure 17: Fabric Repurposed
An example of the kind of products that could be made at the repurposing facility. In Figure 15, Nicole holds a bag made out of different materials. Such kind of articles could be made from other discarded cloth items. Conclusion The main contribution from this pictorial is to present an idea of community run centre where people from all walks of life can come together as a movement and create, engage, involve, participate and evangelize repurposing fashion. We have already seen a similar exemplar which is active in city of Bloomington. We hope to create community awareness and enagement towards sustainable practices, through preserving materials to repurpose fashion. Figure 15: The ‘saved’ material
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References [1] Global fashion industry statistics - International apparel. (2016). Retrieved from https://fashionunited.com/global-fashion-industry-statistics [2] Yue Pan, David Roedl, John C. Thomas, and Eli Blevis. 2012. Re-conceptualizing Fashion in Sustainable HCI (DIS ‘12). ACM, Newcastle, UK, 621-630. [3] Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: Facts and Figures. (2016, December 14). Retrieved February 07, 2017, from https://www.epa.gov/smm/advancing-sustainable-materials-management-facts-and-figures [4] Karin Ekstrom and Nicklas Salomonson. (2014). Reuse and Recycling of Clothing and Textiles-- A Network Approach. Journal of Macromarketing, 383- 399. Retrieved from: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ abs/10.1177/0276146714529658 [5] Kirstin Wiedow. (2014). From Sheep to Product: A Design Exploration into the Benefit of Collective Creativity in Upcycling Waste and Generating Value. ACM. Retrieved from: http://dl.acm.org.proxyiub. uits.iu.edu/citation.cfm?id=2662227&CFID=724933630&CFTOKEN=72714829 [6] Duygu Turker and Ceren Altuntas. (2014). Sustainable supply chain man- agement in the fast fashion industry: An analysis of corpo- rate reports. European Management Journal, 32, 837-849. doi:10.1016/j. emj.2014.02.001
[9] Tom Djajadiningrat, Patray Lui, Pei-Yin Chao, and Christian Richard. 2016. Virtual Trainer: A Low Cost AR Simulation of a Sudden Cardiac Arrest Emergency. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems(DIS ‘16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 607-618 [10] Stephan Wensveen, Oscar Tomico, Martijn ten Bhömer, and Kristi Kuusk. 2014. Growth plan for an inspirational test-bedof smart textile services. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS ‘14). ACM, NewYork, NY, USA, 141-150. [11] Michael Shorter, Jon Rogers, and John McGhee. 2014. Practical notes on paper circuits. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS ‘14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 483-492. [12] James Pierce and Eric Paulos. 2014. Some variations on a counterfunctional digital camera. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS ‘14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 131-140. [13] Daniela K. Rosner, Margaret E. Morris, Ariel Duncan, Sarah E. Fox, Kathi R. Kitner, Ankur Agrawal, and Mei J. Chen. 2016. Designing for Movement in Public Life with Itinerant Probes. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS ‘16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1072-1082.
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[14] William Odom, James Pierce, Erik Stolterman, and Eli Blevis. 2009. Understanding Why We Perserve Some Things and Discard Others in the Context of Interaction Design. Repurposing Thrift Store Fashion. (n.d.). Retrieved February 07, 2017, from http://communitythreads.org/idea-center/2014/9/13/repurposing-thrift-store-fashion
[8] Eli Blevis. 2014. Stillness and motion, meaning and form. InProceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS ‘14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 493-502
[15] Repurposing Thrift Store Fashion. (n.d.). Retrieved February 07, 2017, from http://communitythreads.org/idea-center/2014/9/13/repurposing-thrift-store-fashion
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