One year dress project 2012-13

I didn’t make this dress as an art project. It was motivated by the desire to live as simply as possible and to counter the trends of excessive consumerism and negative practices of the textile and fashion industry that tended towards profits over people and a lack of accountability for how, where and why products were made.

So I made this simple calico dress- basically a sack with arm holes, and wore and embroidered onto it every day for a year.

The project ended with a dinner party in Tasmania. A group of friends joined me as I cut up the dress, we ate small sections of the dress and the rest was distributed for people to use as they want.

Nearly ten years on. The textile and fashion industry is still one of the largest contributors to landfill, not to mention all the associated impact with packing, transport and post production care. But there definitely seems to be a surge of small scale designers, artists and activists actively re-defining the fashion and textiles industry for the better. Second-hand op-shop wares are always going to be number one on my list of where to buy ethical clothes, followed by small scale local designers.

month one

month three

month four

month five

month six

month seven

month eight

month nine

month ten

month eleven

One year dress project (consume-ation dinner) 2013 lo-fi documentation of taking off the dress at the end of the year, washing it with ash, and rolling pieces of it into rice paper rolls to be consumed by dinner party guests