Commission research task

Commission research task: Written for me by Joe B

The idea/ concept being behind clothing made from recyclables, fashion style shoot.

Recycling statistics:

Recycling is an excellent way of saving energy and conserving the environment. Did you know that:

• 1 recycled tin can would save enough energy to power a television for 3 hours.
• 1 recycled glass bottle would save enough energy to power a computer for 25 minutes.
• 1 recycled plastic bottle would save enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for 3 hours.
• 70% less energy is required to recycle paper compared with making it from raw materials.

Some Interesting Facts

• Up to 60% of the rubbish that ends up in the dustbin could be recycled.
• The unreleased energy contained in the average dustbin each year could power a television for 5,000 hours.
• The largest lake in the Britain could be filled with rubbish from the UK in 8 months.
• On average, 16% of the money you spend on a product pays for the packaging, which ultimately ends up as rubbish.
• As much as 50% of waste in the average dustbin could be composted.
• Up to 80% of a vehicle can be recycled.
• 9 out of 10 people would recycle more if it were made easier.

The fact that stuck out here was that %16 of the money we spend on products is for the packaging.

Packing general includes a lot of plastics that are not biodegradable.

In terms of relating fashion to waste:

Taking an average life span of 63 years for a woman she will spend 25,184hours and 53minutes shopping (roughly 3years of their life). On a yearly basis that clocks between 400-500 hours shopping. At least 170 hours of this is spent specifically of clothes.

Danny Treacy

Looking at the series ‘Them’ by Danny Treacy, he immerses himself in these abstract outfits, created from the clothing of strangers.

His outfits are made from recovered clothes, collected from lonely places – the woods, the wasteland, car-parks. He re-stitches and re-fashions them into these humanoid creatures.

They are haunting pieces, sinister, and raw. They mask his identity and he feels as though he can become ‘them’ or at least get as close to ‘them’ as possible, as though he feels fragments of their lives and desires through those last items of clothing they were wearing. They are lit quite sinister, and haunting, they display raw human desires and emotions, or perversions of desires and emotions.

The Homeless

Brother Sharp

This homeless man, most commonly referred to as brother sharp has become an internet phenomenon in both China and now Japan. They are many fashioned stories as to why he is homeless, many say it is a result of the loss of his family, which seems to be the most consistent reason.

Whenever approached directly he appears to cry out in agony, and despite all of his fame, to this day he remains homeless, he refuses society.

His clothing is that of any homeless man, whatever he finds, men’s clothing, women’s clothing, it does not matter as he must keep warm in whatever he may find. The fact that he has boomed a fashion sensation through discarded clothing is quite an irony, and could even be argued to make a critique on our concept of ‘fashion’ and how thin the concept may be.

It is like taking the concept of Danny Treacy in construction of outfits, but to the complete other extreme, as he becomes ‘catwalk’ through what others discard, as a pose to this dark and ‘feared’ concept behind Treacy’s work.