After posting about the Trash Fusion contest, I came up with an idea, albeit an idea which was somewhat simple and labour-intensive to execute – a swingy, tent silhouette paillette dress, where the paillettes are hand-cut from plastic containers.  Then I entered it into the competition.  To my surprise, I was a finalist, and had to make my dress to show in a fashion show.

The little a-line dress was sewn from some leftover, slightly stained muslin, a cheap acetate lining, and of course an invisible zipper and one of the 1000 “Final Fashion” labels I had woven up for my grad collection in 2006 (of which I have used about 20 so far).  I didn’t have to go shopping for any of these things, everything was in my stash, to qualify my entry as being composed of “trash”.  I drafted the pattern from scratch, cut and sewed it in just a few hours.

The tricky, time-intensive part of the project was applying, one by one, by hand, small plastic paillettes.  The paillettes are made from a variety of objects that my scissors and hole punch can snip and punch, again, one by one.  Above you can see food containers, old library cards, student cards, and metrocards, pieces of red plastic beer cups, and so on. I did not apply these in any particular order or colour palette, letting the pattern create itself of its own accord – to realize my vision, I had to cover the entire dress, front and back, with these little bits of things.

I decided to model the paillette dress for the Trash Fusion competition show in Barrie  myself.  I also got my brother, Jake, to take some photos.  Thanks so much Jake for the hospitality and the great photos!  My family was all there, including my Oma and Opa, and I am so glad that they were.

All of the entries were so lovingly crafted.  There were a lot of talented designers in the tent (it was raining), all with very different takes on the contest brief.  You can click any of the photos in this post to see them a bit bigger.  I especially liked the coffee-filter dress (second from left, above), I thought that this designer showed a great use of “trash”.  Some of the designers were teenagers, most were fashion students, and all of them exhibited a tremendous level of work.

Here is a little video of the final procession.

The winner was the big showboat float white dress made of (apparently unused?) paper towel.  Second prize went to the colourful doily mini-dress made out of shoelaces (with a jaunty matching beret) and third went to a previous winner of Trash Fusion Milton, a truly incredible post-apocalyptic tribal dress made out of busted inner tubes and scrap wire.

I’m not going to lie – I get competitive and I would have loved to get a prize, and I am very proud of my dress and I still think it was the best one.  I think it looks incredible on the body and in movement from far away, and close up viewers are delighted to see all the printed ephemera, consumer brands and logos, it is almost Warholian.  I received a lot of positive feedback, and the best was from my 2 year old niece who said my dress was “gorgeous” – so priceless.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed and supported this little project, and thanks to Jane Haselgrove for all her hard work putting the Trash Fusion contest together.

like this post? share it -

•