Fashion, Consumerism and the Environment

Fashion, Consumerism and the Environment: Performance art, sculpture, installation work and photography

For many years, advertising tactics and the available fashions have prompted us to express bodily perfection, with the endeavour to allot ourselves satisfaction, importance or prestige in society. The natural environment, resources and beauty however, are also affected and deteriorating more and more by the excess quantities in which we buy and often waste.

This project explores aspects of fashion advertisement, the consumerism of fashion, and the many associations it has with the natural environment. Advertisements influence our minds and often compel us to throw away last seasons fashion and buy the “new”; this concept however is causing harm and depletion of our natural environment by the extraction of resources and increasing the waste associated with the excess consumerism of fashion.

The Project

The aim of this project was to create unique garments from plastic bags, fashion labels, paper receipts, logos or fashion brands, price tags, tickets, fashion accessories etc... Display them in the natural environment in order to suggest change, invasion or conceptual destruction to the area. Each garment shows a small amount of items that are usually wasted after purchasing the fashion items.

“Fashion, by its very nature, is about in-built obsolescence. It's about waste. We fashion people revel in waste. We look disapprovingly at anyone wearing last season's boots. We want everything to be new, new, new. We want it before it is even in the shops. We are already shopping for winter, the spring before. We pride ourselves on being ahead of the game. We like nothing more than a nice, shiny (and yes, often plastic) carrier bag, full of new clothes (Blanchard, 2007: 2)”

Reference: Blanchard, T. 2007. Green is the New Black: how to change the world with style. UK: Hodder & Stoughton.

Influencing artists: Jum Nakao, Walter Raes, Vivienne Westwood, Mark Liu, Paul Villinski, Gary Harvey, Bob Johnson, Robert Janson, Chris Jordan and Ari Tabei.

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