Fashion With Purpose

ALUMINUM SWING DRESS, made of chainmail aluminum beer and soda pull tabs fastened together.

One Person's Trash is Another's Tuxedo

BY SONYA FEIBERT

PHOTOS BY KAREN DAY

A model is walking down a runway wearing a long, black, strapless formal dress. Its hem just grazes the floor, and there’s a slight sparkle to its fabric. Only on closer inspection do you notice: the black ‘material’ that makes up the dress isn’t polyester or cotton. It doesn’t look like any type of material you’ve seen before.

That’s because this dress is made from the film of hundreds of recycled video tapes. Harrison Ford videos, to be exact. That dress belongs in a museum.

It’s just one of the innovative creations Shaun Muscolo has made in almost 20 years of designing trash fashion—clothing made from items that would have otherwise ended up in a landfill.

SUPERMARKET FORMAL. Made from Albertsons plastic shopping bags, the knitted garment sits atop an underskirt made from 50 pound onion sacks.

“Each piece needs to be made of 80% garbage that’s destined for the landfill or the recycling center,” Muscolo said of her designs. “If I can get enough of one form of garbage, I try to make it into a gown, suit, or cocktail dress.”

Everything Muscolo creates is made to be comfortable for a potential wearer. She’s worked with materials ranging from soda can tabs to plastic bags. “Plastic bags are pretty cool to work with,” Muscolo said. “I make them into one long strip, then knit them with knitting needles, into a stretchy dress, or whatever I’m trying to make, so it stretches. All my pieces fit a variety of sizes.”

A former costume designer, Muscolo has been sewing since she was eight. “My mother had a sewing machine and said ‘Let’s make a dress. You can pick out the fabric,’” she described. “It was really fun.”

CHA-CHING. “This look never tours because it’s our family credit cards, gift cards, hotel room, keys, all kinds of information. Most of that stuff is put in the landfill. But in this case, I made a little cocktail dress out of it,” said Muscolo.

The project sparked what’s become a lifelong passion.

“By the time I was in high school, I was doing all the costumes for the school plays. Sometimes it was 12 costumes, sometimes 90,” Muscolo said. “I was sewing for myself and my sister’s friends. Along the way, I learned how to make clothes that fit a person and how to make them look good. When I had my own family, I made costumes for my kids. It’s been all kinds of fun.”

Muscolo’s foray into trash fashion began after she connected with the Haute Trash Artists Collective. “One of the members, Judy Nielsen, is one of my very close friends, ” she explained. Judy was looking for some additional expertise with fitting. “That’s my specialty,” Muscolo said. “I had the engineering, she had the art.”

MR. MONEY BAGS. Muscolo used money bags from the U.S. Mint. “As the change wears through the money bags, they’re actual trash,” she said

The Collective invited Muscolo to do a runway show, and from there, she was hooked.

“Once people find out what you do with trash, they are willing to save things for you,” Muscolo said. She’s currently working on a wine cork dress and is already thinking about her next project, which is a dress made from hay bale twine that someone donated to her.

“The bales of hay come wrapped in Bronco orange and blue twine. Irresistible, right?” Muscolo said.

Each piece needs to be made of 80% garbage that’s destined for the landfill or the recycling center.

When she gets a material she hasn’t worked with before, she starts small. “I work on a hat, or a handbag, to see how the product fits together. How it drapes,” she said.

For Muscolo, creating fashion from trash brings new meaning to ‘reduce, reuse, recycle.’

“Most of this is around the idea of recycling,” she said. “We have to reduce how much we make. If we try to recycle this much trash, there is no way we can do it cost-effectively. Reducing it can help.”

Muscolo’s two-tone suit is made from Kohl’s store bags, which are themselves recycled. The Cs on the Chanel bag, which uses a technique called tubular knitting, are sown onto the bag.

In her years working with discarded materials, Muscolo has noticed that items she’d previously used to create clothing are no longer available, which she notes is a positive change.

“Manufacturers have done a lot to reduce their volume of packaging,” Muscolo noted. “I made a dress that had a Las Vegas showgirl vibe out of transparent yogurt lids, the kind that had a plastic top with foil underneath. Now, they just have foil.”

WALMART AFTER DARK. This floor length gown is made from Walmart bags and a white shopping bag stoll.

With Muscolo’s skills, plastic yogurt lid tops or soda tabs become something entirely new. Something beautiful.

“If an audience is looking at it, it has to be beautiful,” she said.

Muscolo’s creations go on display around Boise in runway shows and other events. “Last year, Boise State offered me about 100 feet of gallery space and that was a fun show,” she said.

If an audience is looking at it, it has to be beautiful.

Creating something new from something old also brings out a bit of the past, a sense of the purpose the materials served before they were discarded.

“There’s always a story. That’s what’s amazing about it all,” Muscolo said.

A nurse who works with patients going through chemotherapy gave her empty infusion bottles. “They’re just beautiful,” Muscolo said. “They’re so clean and look like snow. You’d never know they were from chemo.”

WEDDING DRESS. Made from shopping bags and knitted into a garment.

Another dress she designed came from aluminum tent poles from a family reunion.

Muscolo doesn’t sell any of the clothing she makes. “It’s just for fun and awareness,” she said. “I hope it makes you look at your trash in a different way.”

Once you’ve seen a dress made from Harrison Ford videotapes, you’re sure to look at trash a little differently, considering some of the many possibilities it contains.