Trashique
Story by Audrey Dubois-Boutet // Photos by Tyler McFarland
"Oh my God, you got in!" exclaims her date.
Girard, a trash designer from Seattle's Ballard district, often rescues reusable trash from Dumpsters to make garments. She went one step further on Feb. 1, 2009 when she asked her date to help her find trash on their second outing. Dressed in stylish clothing-albeit warm with five layers, to protect herself in the middle of winter-Girard met up with the lucky man.
The cold February weather hit the two hard in the enclosed space. The large metal bin trapped the cold winter air and made her glad to have worn a down vest, hat and scarf, she says.
After an hour of rummaging through the Dumpster, Girard finds enough items to begin her design, including orange construction fencing and three pieces of Helly Hansen rain gear. She donated a quarter of her findings to Goodwill-items such as bungee cords and unopened tools that were perfectly usable-and used the rest to fashion a garment.
"There's something about being in a Dumpster that makes me ask 'How do I make this into fashion?'" Girard says.
Six weeks later, on April 11, 2009, wearing a black "Be the Change" T-shirt, the petite, redheaded designer showed off the new life she gave to the trash she found on that chilly day in Ballard. Girard, who chose the designer name "Remixa Plastiqua," attended the eighth-annual Recycled Art and Fashion Show at Wild Buffalo in Bellingham, organized by the city's RE Store.
A yellow raincoat cascades over the back of a bell-shaped orange construction fence, and blinds, rescued from the teeth of a neighbor's neurotic puppy, are shaped as accordions to give volume to the back of the skirt. Two melted vinyl records form the bustier, giving the upper half of the garment a stiff, shiny look. A wig, fan and a broken glass necklace complete the classic Marie Antoinette look titled, "The Ballard Ballroom."
Girard was victim to many hot-glue gun burns during her six weeks of making the gown, which she constructed in the evenings and on Saturdays. Her friend and fellow designer, Tamara Adlin, turned to gardening gloves as protection from the scorching glue. One look at the gloves shows every finger covered with dried and hardened glue, even after three different de-gluing sessions.
The idea of the trash fashion movement is to take items that cannot be recycled and rework them to give the items a new beginning as a work of art, says Robin Worley, a designer for Haute Trash.
Haute Trash, a trash fashion organization taking its name from Haute Couture, was established in Nevada City, Calif., and now has satellite groups in cities such as San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco and Bend, Ore. Yearly fashion shows encourage designers to search for non-recyclable items and reusable trash to convert into runway wear.
Each week, a 9-mile long train leaves Seattle on its way to discard the city's trash in Eastern Oregon, Worley says.
More than half of the garbage that occupies U.S. landfills is packing materials, and of that percentage, half is paper that could have been recycled, she says.
Worley, who has friends in Europe, says the system in the population-dense continent is better than U.S. recycling procedures, as European manufacturers are responsible for packaging. A European consumer can purchase a product and leave the packaging at the store, giving the burden of discarding the packing materials to the producer.
Trash fashion allows what would otherwise sit in a landfill to be given a new life. Worley, whose designer name is "Rayona Visqueen," says she often sits on the bus and scopes out future projects.
"I look at backpacks and I think 'That looks like it's falling apart; it would make a cute top,'" she says.
Rebecca Maxim, a nurse whose designer name is "Alottadetritus," has shown her design in five shows and now considers herself part of the trash fashion community. She says creating garments from trash is a growing trend and was initially done by a small group of designers in California.
These days, people as far as Great Britain and New Zealand are involved in trash fashion, as seen in the yearly Trash to Fashion awards in New Zealand, Worley says.
The movement has evolved from a small group of artists to creative people everywhere, and being an artist is not a requirement to participate.
"I consider myself a nurse, not an artist," she says.
Trash fashion has become so widespread that a few garments for Bellingham's fashion show came from San Francisco and London.
Maxim recently traveled to Mexico, Patagonia and Nepal, and noted Americans throw away much more than other countries.
Hoping to collect foreign trash for future creations, Maxim took a great interest in unrecyclable items found in Mexico. On her trip to the Yucatan Peninsula, she was told the trash that was washed up on the beach came from African freighters and traveled hundreds of miles through Atlantic currents. Unfortunately, the trash had degraded too much for Maxim's intent.
She says Nepal's trash collection system was nearly nonexistent when she traveled to the Asian country, yet the amount of trash was not as high as in the U.S.
Jason Darling, education and marketing coordinator of the RE Store, says Nepal already consumes less than the U.S., and what people do not use they feed to their animals, including fruit rinds.
Instead of dumping reusable items into landfills like Americans, people in Nepal pick through trash until what is left is no longer usable, Darling says. For example, plastic bags, the country's most common pieces of trash, are swept and burned to keep warm in the cool mornings, despite the dangerous fumes given off by burning plastic, he says.
The U.S. is quick to bury its trash in dumps, leaving few opportunities to pick through to procure reusable items. Every Dumpster holds reusable goods, Darling says.
For years, Darling rummaged through Western's Dumpsters at the end of the school year to find reusable items students threw away before the start of the summer. He says throughout the years he has found a leather jacket, a working car stereo and shoes.
Western senior Ben Weiser, who has worked with Western's Recycling Center since 2006, says the center adds recovery barrels to residence halls a couple times a year to reduce the amount of reusable goods disposed of by students.
The barrels are set out in the winter when Asia University America Program students leave Western, as well as after spring quarter. The items collected by the barrels are donated to charity, Weiser says.
Throwing away used goods is a relatively new concept, Darling says. Americans have been wasteful for the past 50 years because it was economical and easy to throw things away.
Corporations started producing goods to make money by building short-lived products that would need to be replaced frequently, which caused the volume in the landfills to grow, Darling says.
In some instances, the trash does not find its way to landfills. Worley says she is appalled when she finds out new information regarding trash. For example, ocean currents in the Pacific Ocean transport floating debris to a central location, forming what is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Worley says. The garbage patch is rumored to be twice the size of Texas or as large as India, she says.
"We are all part of the problem," she says.
Girard is just one person who has embraced the trash fashion trend as a way to reduce waste and says the fashion shows give light to how much people throw away.
Once garments like Girard's have had their one-year runs in fashion shows, they are either shipped to other locations to appear in various shows, placed in a large storage facility in California where Haute Trash began, or stored in the recesses of Worley's living room.
Girard plans to make new garments to enter into fashion shows in fall 2009.
"I have ideas," she says. "I just need to go Dumpster dive-to replenish supplies."
She says the material she finds on her trash expeditions determines the design of the garment since the trash is difficult to work with. But, she would like to see trash made into more big dresses and headdresses.