Binotto, Payne - 2017 - The Poetics of Waste Contemporary Fashion Practice in The Context of Wastefulness-Annotated

Fashion Practice
The Journal of Design, Creative Process & the Fashion Industry
ISSN: 1756-9370 (Print) 1756-9389 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rffp20
The Poetics of Waste: Contemporary Fashion

Practice in the Context of Wastefulness
Carla Binotto & Alice Payne
To cite this article: Carla Binotto & Alice Payne (2017) The Poetics of Waste: Contemporary
Fashion Practice in the Context of Wastefulness, Fashion Practice, 9:1, 5-29
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17569370.2016.1226604
Published online: 13 Oct 2016.
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Download by: [Cornell University Library] Date: 28 June 2017, At: 06:42
Fashion Practice, 2017, Volume 9, Issue 1, pp. 5–29
DOI: 10.1080/17569370.2016.1226604
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
The Poetics
of Waste:
Contemporary
Fashion Practice
in the Context of
Carla Binotto and
Alice Payne Wastefulness
Carla Binotto is an Abstract
independent scholar and
fashion designer. Her This article traces several interwoven traditions of considering waste
postgraduate fashion
and its materiality within fashion practice. Waste in fashion is com-
research was undertaken
at Queensland University monly considered a problem to be solved, whether through reduced
of Technology, Brisbane, consumption, improved production processes, or recycling and upcy-
Australia. Carla’s research cling practices. While the pragmatic and effective “waste management”
interests include the social life approaches are key to developing a sustainable fashion industry they
and life cycle of clothing and
can also distance and obscure the materiality of waste, and in doing so
objects, and reuse, recycling
and repurposing in fashion overlook the potency and poignancy that waste can have. As a coun-
design practice. ter-approach to the problems of waste, this article explores a poetic
binottoc@gmail.com element that relates to an aesthetic of the worn and wasted, and a fash-
ion practice that elevates rather than disguises waste. This is discussed
6 Carla Binotto and Alice Payne
through a case study of experimental fashion label Maison Briz Vegas, Dr. Alice Payne is a lecturer
in Fashion at Queensland
reflecting on time, place and waste.
University of Technology,
Brisbane, Australia. Her research
KEYWORDS: fashion, waste, refashioning, upcycling, poetics interests include the fashion
design process, the Australian
mass-market fashion industry,
and the problem of design for
sustainability within the fashion
Introduction context. Alice is also an award-
Waste in fashion is commonly seen as a problem to be solved, wheth- winning designer, investigating
er through reduced consumption, improved production processes, or design for sustainability in fashion
via practice-led research.
recycling and upcycling practices. However, waste can also play a role a1.payne@qut.edu.au
as part of a poetic language of fashion. This article traces several inter-
woven traditions of considering waste within fashion practice. The first
is waste as a problem (i.e. environmentally polluting, or morally wrong
in its associations with excess and lavishness) and therefore something
to be reduced or eliminated. The second considers waste as a feedstock
for new designs in which textile waste is masked and revalorized, with
the designer acting as a conjurer to make new goods from old. The
third approach relates to a poetic element within fashion practice, an
aesthetic of the worn and wasted in which waste is elevated rather
than disguised. This last approach we examine through a case study of
experimental fashion label Maison Briz Vegas. Maison Briz Vegas uses
discarded t-shirts and generic consumer waste—symbols of mass-pro-
duction and the everyday—to create artisanal designer fashion. Work-
ing from both within and without the fashion center of Paris, Maison
Briz Vegas works within a tradition of displacement and elevation of
waste. Aside from the environmental activism such a practice may im-
ply, this article discusses a poetics of waste: how the potency and poign-
ancy of rubbish can be harnessed to reflect on universal ideas of grief,
loss and renewal.
Waste and Wastefulness

In its simplest meaning “waste” denotes “discarded, expelled, or excess
matter” (Hawkins 2006, viii), the remains of something we no longer
need or want. It can refer to the practice of using something unwisely,
carelessly or lavishly, such as time or money; a process of deteriora-
tion, the “wasting away” of something; the unwanted by-products of
a process; a place or thing unused, neglected or unproductive. Waste is
unavoidable. As Moser (2002, 102) states, “there is no system—wheth-
er biological, technical, social, or historical—that does not produce
remnants, remains, scraps, leftovers, that does not leave certain parts
to decay.” Yet the question is what this waste or leftover becomes, or
what it goes on to cause. In natural systems, waste may become “food”
for new cycles of growth (McDonough and Braungart 2002); how-
ever in human systems, industrial and consumer waste has often led
to pollution and environmental degradation. As a concept, waste has
The Poetics of Waste: Contemporary Fashion Practice in the Context of Wastefulness 7
become associated with pollution, guilt, loss and damage. In The Ethics
of Waste, Hawkins (2006) argues that since the mid-twentieth century,
waste has been problematized as an environmental threat, and attitudes
towards waste and its meaning have changed. Waste management sys-
tems and education campaigns that promote “doing the right thing”
for the environment by recycling and conserving natural resources, for
example, “have implicated waste in the formation of new circuits of
guilt and conscience and practices of self-regulation” (Hawkins 2006,
ix). In this notion of waste, waste is a burden to be managed, reduced
and eliminated.
Critically, “waste” is connected to notions of value, which are
ever shifting. It is a state that things can move in and out of. Items,
goods and leftovers formerly deemed waste can be re-categorized and
reclaimed with fresh value ascribed to them. As Gregson and Crewe
(2003, 143) explain, “life can be infinite, value can lie dormant, [and]
meaning can be hidden from view, awaiting rediscovery.” Thus, engage-
ment with the material world of “waste” can be intimate, sensorial and
profound; according to Edensor (2005, 316), it is possible to search for
the “congealed life in discarded things, seeking out their allegorical po-
tentialities, and a multitude of other semiotic, sensual, practical, social
and aesthetic potential that reside in objects.” Furthermore, as Assmann
(2002, 78) describes, the ephemeral nature of rubbish makes it a pow-
erful metaphor for life itself, a “life in thrall to the fury of extinction.”
It is this capacity for waste to provoke thought and reflection that this
paper explores as a poetics of waste. We argue that waste, in its material
form, is expressive. Its presence can disrupt and provoke, particularly
when it appears out of place. Thus, the poetic and aesthetic disposition
of trash has the potential for meaningful engagement with the world.
Furthermore, if waste is hidden or disguised, it is denied the opportunity
to communicate and any engagement will be forgone.
Slavoj Žižek, in Examined Life (2009, 163), proposes we embrace
the aesthetic dimension of and “discover trash as an aesthetic object.”
Rejecting the sacralization of nature as a true motivation for ecological
change, Žižek (2009, 163) argues, “The true spiritual challenge is to
develop … a kind of emotional attachment to, or to find meaning in,
useless objects.” In a similar vein to Žižek, Hawkins suggests that what
needs to be considered is that “it might actually be waste, rather than
“nature” or “the environment,” that triggers new actions, that inspires
us” (Hawkins 2006, 11). The proposal of waste as unlikely inspiration
has parallels with Bennett’s (2001) notion of “enchantment.” Accord-
ing to Bennett, despite the dominant notions of disenchantment and
alienation associated with the modern world, moments of enchantment
nevertheless exist—with nature and commodities—and these experi-
ences can have a powerful affective force, promote reflections on the
ethical and have the potential to motivate ethical responses. Similarly
to Hawkins, it is Bennett’s view that the affective, more so than the
pragmatic, dimensions of ethics can offer meaningful contribution to

“the enactment of ethical aspirations, which requires … a distinctive
assemblage of affective propulsions” (Bennett 2001, 2). Bennett’s
notion of enchantment encompasses states of wonderment, fascination,
vitality and play that can arise from novel encounters, the unexpect-
ed and uncanny, or from “active engagement with objects of sensuous
experience” (Bennett 2001, 5). Following these ideas we suggest that
moments of enchantment can come from encountering, interacting and
engaging with waste in its various forms, states and places—and that
this engagement can be channeled through creative fashion practice.
This engagement with waste may prompt reflection on environmental
issues, though not necessarily in an instrumental problem/solution
mode. Rather, the aesthetic of the worn and the wasted can prompt
reflections on notions of loss, grief and the capacity for rebirth: a
poetics of waste. Embracing the physicality of waste and its aesthetic
disposition can invoke these moments of enchantment that may foster
meaningful attachment to the world and influence ethical approaches.
The discarded shoe, the flattened aluminum can hold both aesthetic and
symbolic potency, to those who would look. These differing notions
of waste: as burden, as accommodating shifting value, and as holding
the capability for inspiration, reflection and enchantment, are now dis-
cussed in relation to fashion practice.
Fashion Design and Waste-making/Making with Waste

The modern fashion system has a very specific relationship to waste.
Indeed, waste-making is central to the workings of it. Fashion in the
modern era is based on the logic of perpetual stylistic change and
operates within what Entwistle (2009) terms an aesthetic market
that fetishizes the new. Fashion relies on the new to replace the old,
even if the new is adapted from the old and the old is still as “good
as new.” In order to maintain newness and accommodate new goods,
Edensor (2005, 315) explains that an unwanted surplus of “irrelevant,
dirty and disorderly” existing items must be recognized, established
as rubbish and disposed of. Accordingly, in fashion the appearance of
new styles and trends works to devalue the previous ones and make
them irrelevant. Following Entwistle, as Payne (2012, 205) articu-
lates, “Once fashion trends move on, the aesthetic value of a garment
declines. It becomes waste.” This manifests through “wasteful” c onsumer
behavior, where clothes are discarded not necessarily because they are
worn out but rather because they are outdated and no longer desirable.
Furthermore, the sped-up cycle of production‒consumption‒disposal
and the low cost of clothing in the era of fast fashion have made clothing
increasingly “disposable” and replaceable.
The process of creating clothes inevitably creates waste. Waste
in fashion registers not only through abandoned garments, but also
includes the intangible waste of labor and creative energy expended

to produce the garments, and the waste of tangible resources such as
water and fuel in growing fiber, and in producing, dyeing and cutting
textiles (Payne 2012). Thus in addition to the physical outputs resulting
from the disposal of garments and fashion products, waste is also
incurred through the inputs required to create them and this waste can
be polluting and environmentally destructive. Although the purchasing
and disposal habits of consumers contribute to fashion’s waste, fashion
designers are complicit in waste creation simply by designing and
producing garments, and by extension are complicit in the associated
environmental damage. As Farrer (2011, 22) contends, although
designers may be “inadvertently responsible for the creation of fashion
and clothing waste,” designers may also play a central role in reducing
or eliminating these varied manifestations of waste.
Tackling Waste
A number of responses have been developed to reduce or eliminate the
various forms of waste within fashion. Following the waste hierarchy
(DEFRA 2011), prevention of waste is the crucial first stage in man-
aging waste, followed by reuse of products, recycling and recovery.
Disposal is the last resort (see Figure 1). Complex, trans-global sup-
ply chains facilitate the resale and reuse of second-hand apparel, and
much of the apparel unsuitable for resale is absorbed into recycling
networks (see Hawley 2011). Within the design context, responses to
the problem of waste include reducing or eliminating the fabric waste
incurred by traditional pattern-cutting methods through minimum or
zero-waste patternmaking, enabling ease of recycling through design
for disassembly or design with monomaterials, and design of modular
garments that enable sections to be replaced instead of disposing of the
entire garment if a section is damaged beyond repair. Chief of these
approaches to waste management are upcycling practices, also referred
to as “reclamation” (Fletcher and Grose 2012) and “refashioning”
(Brown 2013; Farrer 2011), in which reclaimed waste is used to pro-
duce new garments.
Reuse, recycling and upcycling practices enable a revaluing of pre-
and post-consumer textile waste. Pre-consumer textile waste, or off-
cuts from the cutting process, can be shredded and re-spun into new
yarn, or post-consumer polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles can
be converted into polyester fabric. These processes have a twin positive
effect in redirecting pre- and post-consumer waste away from landfill
but also reducing the demand for virgin fiber needed to produce new
textiles (Farrer 2011). McDonough and Braungart’s (2002) cradle to
cradle model of industrial ecology—in which all waste becomes food
for new product life cycles—has inspired action from large companies
such as Patagonia to develop garments that can be close-loop recycled
Figure 1
most prevention
favoured The waste hierarchy. Illustration by
option Drsteuy (2008).
minimisation
reuse
recycling
least
energy recovery
favoured
option disposal
into new garments with no loss of quality. As Black (2012) notes, these
kinds of upcycling practices are moving from being niche practices to
mainstream. For example, fast fashion chain Topshop’s capsule Reclaim
to Wear collections, in partnership with upcycling pioneer Orsola de
Castro and Filippo Ricci, launched in 2012, introduced upcycling to a
broad consumer audience.
Masking Waste
The use of recycled yarns and the upcycling, reclamation or refashion-
ing of existing textile waste are effective ways of revalorizing waste that
would otherwise go to landfill.
In mass-production, G-Star Raw and BIONIC yarns harvest plastic
waste from the oceans to use as a feedstock for new yarn for designer
denim. In artisanal fashion practice, many designers work with reclaimed
fabrics to create garments that do not betray their humble origins. For
example, British designer Christopher Raeburn, who launched his
label in 2008, has used decommissioned military stock, parachute silk,
Swedish army snowsuits as well as various uniforms in his collections
of menswear and womenswear (Brown 2013; Sibley 2009). American
artist and designer Greg Lauren uses old army tents, blankets and
duffle bags to create his collections, which have a worn and weathered
aesthetic. The label From Somewhere, established by Orsola de Castro
in 1997, utilizes pre-consumer textile waste in upcycled collections,
working with unevenly shaped pieces to create visual interest through
paneling. From Somewhere has also transformed reclaimed Speedo
wetsuits into chic body con dresses (Vogue UK 2012). Other labels
working with reclaimed textiles include Goodone, TraidRemade and
Frau Wagner (Brown 2013).
These approaches—the recycling and upcycling of pre- and post-con-
sumer waste—make use of material potentiality and the “embodied
energy” (Fletcher and Grose 2012, 63) that exists within the already
made—a practice that doesn’t draw from, or “waste,” more finite nat-
ural resources. To return to the notions of waste discussed earlier, this
is a view of waste as undesirable, polluting, and something to be elim-
inated. These approaches aim to eliminate, reduce or convert material
waste and excess matter, yet often this really means that the waste is no
longer visible; the garments absorb or conceal it. The designer becomes
a conjurer, essentially making waste “disappear.” However, waste nev-
er really disappears; it just goes somewhere else. As Marilyn Strathern
(as cited in Hetherington 2004, 162) contends, “one cannot dispose of
waste, only convert it into something else within its own life.” The waste
is therefore still present in its material form, but it has been revalorized
and masked as “food” (following McDonough and Braungart 2002) for
new processes.
Moreover, this masking of waste is characteristic of a fashion sys-
tem that privileges newness and first-cycle consumption. Fabric rem-
nants from the cutting stage are upcycled into garments that look new.
Zero-waste patternmaking works to eliminate offcuts, but excess fabric
may hide in tucks and folds. Fabric made from recycled PET bottles
passes as virgin fiber and is used to create new garments. The backstory
of the garments and their utilization of waste may be communicated
through marketing material or swing tags, but garments themselves
skillfully appear “new.” Although these are important approaches to
limiting the environmental impact of fashion, these practices may serve
to mask waste while satisfying the desire for newness. The designers’
need to mask or conjure away waste is fundamentally linked to society’s
acceptance, or often rejection, of items that appear damaged, old or
worn. In part, this masking of waste relates to a notion of newness that
has developed with modern consumerism (Campbell 1992). “New” is
equated with “clean,” unworn or unused by an anonymous other. In
the case of upcycling post-consumer textiles—“used” clothes—the idea
of wearing something that has been worn by others is not appealing to
many people as it relates to the idea of something being “dirty.” Thus
used clothing may disgust and repel. Second-hand clothing exhibits
traces of use through signs of wear that are directly linked to the body
and practices of wearing. Odors, stains, tears, fading, stretching, the
thinning of fabric in certain areas are all signs of bodily presence (Greg-
son and Crewe 2003, 156). According to Gregson and Crewe, the con-
sumption of second-hand clothing “requires individuals to confront too
both the constructions and taboos of personal bodily dirt and death,
and their own thresholds in relation to these” (2003, 156). Gregson
and Crewe discuss the ways in which an “unknown other, [and] his
or her body and practices of wearing” (2003, 156) are negotiated by
consumers of second-hand clothing through “divestment rituals,” such
as cleaning and personalization. Designers using post-consumer textiles
must also negotiate degrees of bodily presence and within their practice
incorporate methods that cleanse and renew so as consumers might
accept their products.
This shifting, hiding, concealing and converting of waste are the ways
in which excess matter no longer wanted, needed or valued is dealt
with in modern society. Moreover, according to Žižek (2009, 162),
rubbish “disappearing” is part of our daily perception of reality. When

domestic waste is flushed away or bagged, binned, collected and taken
away by garbage trucks, it really just gets relocated. The “away” place
facilitates mental and geographical distance between consumers and
the materiality of waste. Furthermore, the distancing of “away” places
renders them invisible and this, as Clapp (2001, 4) argues, “creates an
illusion that there are enough places for wastes to go.” This can facil-
itate obliviousness, apathy, disavowal and a shirking of responsibili-
ty towards waste. Therefore while the pragmatic and effective “waste
management” approaches designed to mask or eliminate waste do
play a vital role in developing a sustainable fashion industry, we argue
that these approaches can also distance and obscure the materiality of
waste, and in doing so overlook the affective and communicative pow-
er that waste can have—as well as its potential for beauty and poetry.
In the following section we address designers who make waste visible
in their work.
Elevating Waste
Parallel to practices that disguise reclaimed waste are practic-
es that elevate it. Since the 1990s, the work of labels such as Mai-
son M artin Margiela and XULY.Bët demonstrate an approach to
utilizing waste in which the waste is highly visible and becomes an
integral part of the design aesthetic. As Rovine (2005) notes in the
work of XULY.Bët’s designer Lamine Kouyaté, the physical recy-
cling of garments equates with the restless change of fashion that
returns to the past for inspiration, and XULY.Bët designs literally
return to old clothing as a source for new fashion, often retaining
the stains and marks of their previous owners. As a Malian designer
based in France, Lamine Kouyaté’s work is not framed as an eco-ac-
tivist approach to making waste visible, but rather his work lies at
a complex intersection of culture, fashion and materiality. Kouyaté,
quoted in Rovine (2005, 224) says, “It’s an African—and any Third
World nation’s—philosophy to use things up. You don’t waste any-
thing, but create new from old.” Kouyaté continues to examine this,
most recently in his 2015 public and unscheduled appearance dur-
ing New York Fashion Week which took place “guerrilla-style, on
the sidewalk outside the Skylight at Moynihan Studio in Midtown,
right after Anna Sui’s always popular and heavily attended show”
(Trebay 2015). Kouyaté’s show was intentionally disruptive to high
fashion norms, as were his designs and presentations in the 1990s.
Another approach to the elevation of waste in fashion is seen in the
work of Martin Margiela and the team at Maison Martin Margiela, in
which second-hand garments are deconstructed and reassembled. Evans
(1998) discusses Margiela’s work as a process of effecting creative trans-
formations and reversals through material. Although the end products
exist in the field of high fashion, the raw materials Margiela starts with
are “abject materials” and “fashion detritus” such as “second-hand or
army surplus clothing ... the commodity form with the lowest value
in the fashion system” (Evans 1998, 85). However Margiela’s practice
cannot be viewed as simply a desire to elevate poor materials as part
of a pragmatic environmental agenda. Rather, as Vinken (2005, 143)
argues, Margiela’s use of waste is “not a moral, but an entirely aesthetic
maneuver.” Instead, his work captures the poetic and affective capacity
of discarded items revalorized.
Used items of clothing are potent artifacts that can hold rich sym-
bolic meaning. As Wilson articulates, “clothes are amongst the most
fraught objects in the material world of things, since they are so closely
involved with the human body and the human life-cycle” (2003, vii).
Through its materiality and close relationship to the body, clothing
develops history and biography and continues to have a “life” even after
having been discarded (Gregson and Crewe 2003; Miller 2005). This
idea activates second-hand clothing to appear alive and full of potential
for designers. Tseelon (2012) proposes that Margiela sees the potential
value in the material qualities of old clothing as a “creative ingredient.”
Thus keeping visible the origins of the old clothes, with their stains and
signs of wear from other bodies, can feed into the metaphorical beauty
of elevating waste to make new garments.
A number of designers working in upcycling do so as a way to lim-
it the environmental impact of fashion production and consumption,
and the visibility of waste within their work becomes a bold state-
ment associated with sustainable fashion. One example is the designs
of London-based label Junky Styling that retain visible imprints of
the garments’ origins, with elements such as shirt cuffs and plackets
still recognizable but repositioned in new ways. Visually this approach
references the deconstruction aesthetic led by designers such as Rei
Kawakubo and Martin Margiela in the 1980s and 1990s (Gill 1998).
However the revalorizing of old clothing waste can also be seen as an
activist response to fast fashion and over-consumption. Junky Styling
designers Sanders and Seager (2009, 159) say of their work that it
“demonstrates that even within the disposable, fickle world of fashion,
it is still possible to exercise ecological awareness.” Similarly, the Ital-
ian designer Pietra Pistoletto develops artisanal ranges of second-hand
garments from waste in which the humble origins of the materials re-
main visible yet altered. Pistoletto refers to the waste she collects and
painstakingly transforms as “anti-jewels” (Ricchetti and Frisa 2012,
206), upturning the luxury associated with high fashion. When cloth-
ing waste is visibly reused and revitalized, it becomes a potent state-
ment of renewal.
In the case of Margiela and XULY.Bët, the connection to environ-
mental activism is not as clear as with that of Junky Styling. Mar-
giela’s work is not about proposing eco fashion (Gill 1998). Rather
Evans (2003, 37) refers to Margiela’s work as “melancholy derelic-

tion” upturning notions of capitalism’s excesses, likening him to the
romantic figure of the nineteenth century ragpicker. Similarly, XULY.Bët
designs are not simply sustainable approaches to utilizing waste, but also
explorations into the cultural meaning of clothing, and its connections
to people, place, bodies and life. As Danese (2012, 50) notes, these
refashioning practices have entered the “grammar” of fashion practice,
as the worn and the wasted has become a wider fashion aesthetic as
well as part of the grammar of a narrower sustainable fashion practice.
That the waste used to create the new designs is visible and exposed in
the new garment has become part of the magic of the designer’s con-
juring. While frequently discussed as part of an environmental agenda,
these refashioning practices can equally hold the metaphorical meaning
of waste that Assmann (2002) describes—the beauty of the transient
and the connection of these to profound notions of human loss, death
and rebirth.
In these varied approaches can be seen a disparity in the concep-
tual frameworks that inform design for sustainability theory on one
hand, and an artisanal studio-based fashion practice on the other.
Practitioners Georgia McCorkill and Soumitiri Varadarajan (2012)
describe a tension between the “poetics” of fashion practice (which
may prioritize aesthetics, “symbolic pronouncements” and a sensory
or emotional engagement with materials) and the “pragmatics” of
approaches to sustainability (which are quantitative, rational and

systematic). Designers who make visible the waste used within their
practice may have both pragmatic and poetic motivations. Refashion-
ing old garments into new can be viewed as a pragmatic response to a
brief: the problem is a glut of post-consumer textile waste; the solution
is to design garments to use this waste rather than virgin fiber. How-
ever the elevation of waste by designers such as Martin Margiela and
others suggests a material sensitivity to the aesthetic and emotive po-
tency of waste. The following section explores the visibility and poet-
ics of waste further through a case study of experimental fashion label
Maison Briz Vegas.
Maison Briz Vegas and the Enchantment of Waste

Maison Briz Vegas is a fashion-based artistic practice in which its
designers use fashion as a medium to comment on the fashion industry,
as both insiders and outsiders, and do so through processes that align
with artistic practices. The aim of the case study is to illuminate the
poetic use of waste in both design process and final product. As dis-
cussed in the sections above, many of the approaches to tackling waste in
fashion are centered around the designer as doing good for the environ-
ment, inspired to take action to combat unsustainable industry p
ractices.
Although important, this focus on the environmental motivations of
designers can overshadow what may be at the heart of a practice—

which in the case of Maison Briz Vegas is the poetic transformation of
wasted objects. This case study examines both the process of gathering
and transforming waste, as well as the final designs.
Established in Paris in 2011, Maison Briz Vegas creates bespoke
recycled collections using discarded t-shirts and generic consumer
rubbish—symbols of mass-production and the everyday. Through gar-
ment designs, prints, material selection and an artisanal recycling pro-
cess that incorporates craft practices and couture techniques, Maison
Briz Vegas explores the transformative potential of banal clothing waste
and consumer rubbish, as well as presenting an alternative idea of lux-
ury, newness and value in fashion, clothing and materials. In addition
to taking a slow, anti-industrial approach that counters the current con-
ventional system of fashion and clothing production, an environmental
activist message is communicated—often humorously—through print
designs, promotional photography, blog posts and collection presenta-
tions. Three Maison Briz Vegas collections have been produced and
presented to date, with two created in Paris and presented to interna-
tional buyers and press in an exclusive showroom during Paris Fashion
Week, and the third created in Brisbane, Australia, presented as part of
Together Alone, a runway show in ID Fashion Week, Dunedin, New
Zealand, featuring contemporary New Zealand and Australian designers
(Hathaway 2015). The third collection was also exhibited in a contem-
porary craft and design gallery.
The Maison Briz Vegas concept and first collection, titled The
Wasteland (SS2011), was created by Carla van Lunn in Paris, where
she had been living and working for several years. The Wasteland was
motivated by the excesses of modern consumer culture, environmental
damage caused by the fashion industry, and influenced by the gloom
of the economic climate following the Global Financial Crisis, and the
visibly increasing poverty and homelessness in the streets of Paris. The
small artisanal collection was made from the fabric of second-hand
t-shirts, sourced from the flea markets at Porte de Montreuil, which
were washed, dyed, unpicked, patched, hand block printed with original
designs, re-cut and sewn into new garments (see Figure 2). Some edges
were left raw, others finely finished by hand. Subtle patchwork joins were
deliberately positioned and designed for each garment. Embroidery and
applique techniques were applied to some print designs (see Figure 3)
and flattened jar lids were used as buttons (see Figure 4). Whimsical
print designs contained environmental symbolism—a jacket printed
with a mix of fish and bombs, for example (see also Figure 4). For
van Lunn, the use of cheap second-hand t-shirt fabric and domestic
rubbish in a couture manner was a way of challenging ideas of luxury
and value in a high-end fashion context while also drawing attention
to issues of wastefulness in the industry. Following The Wasteland
collection Maison Briz Vegas became a collaborative project, with Carla
Figure 2
Origin and outcome, The Wasteland. Photo: Maison Briz Vegas, 2012.
Figure 3
Process and product, The Wasteland. Photo: Maison Briz Vegas, 2012.
Binotto joining van Lunn in Paris to develop the second collection. A

constant motivation for the two designers is transforming the humble
and discarded into something rich and beautiful.
Figure 4
The Wasteland. Photo: Maison Briz Vegas, 2012.
Through the use of second-hand clothes and waste items as prima-

ry materials transformed through practices of recycling and upcycling,
the methods of Maison Briz Vegas can be understood as aligning with
fashion and sustainability agendas in taking a slow and considered
approach to materials. However, in the case of Maison Briz Vegas there
is another motivation at play: an underlying desire to draw beauty and
magic out of waste and excess. Maison Briz Vegas uses waste for aes-
thetic and poetic reasons and as a vehicle through which to explore the
relationships between the material and the human. It is an approach
that faces the grimness of modern consumerism and its impacts, and
embraces waste to elevate it and present it in a new light. For this rea-
son, the work connects to a twin lineage of fashion practice extending
from Margiela’s sensitive handling of waste as aesthetic, to the trans-
formative upcycling approaches of contemporary sustainable fashion
practitioners.
Placing Waste/Places of Waste

Place, geographically and symbolically, is a recurring theme in the work
of Maison Briz Vegas and is suggested by the name itself. Maison Briz
Vegas is a playful and irreverent reference to the notion of French tra-
dition and luxury, and the Australian designers’ subtropical home city
of Brisbane, which has a limited history of sartorial culture. Collections
are shaped by the locations where they are developed and created, as
the designers source the second-hand t-shirts and discarded materi-
als locally. Thus materials used to create the collections are subject to
what is available at a particular geographic location and according to
climate. Trips to the flea markets in Paris would yield an abundance
of t-shirts during the summer months but very few during the winter,
when woolen jumpers and old fur coats replace them. The Glam and
The Gloom, a winter collection, used second-hand jumpers as the base
fabric for new garments or quilted them between printed t-shirt fabric
(see Figure 5). In comparison to the clearly defined seasons of Paris, the
subtropical climate of Brisbane means that thrift shops have a constant
glut of t-shirts but very few warm winter items.
In Paris, sourcing the second-hand clothing involved physically trav-
eling beyond the peripherique, the boundary that encircles Paris, and
symbolically moving from the center of luxury and style to the mar-
gins. Place is also referenced symbolically through the collections. The
Wasteland title alludes to a place, wild and desolate. The second col-
lection, The Glam and The Gloom, a reference to Irish mythology, was
about magic and hope versus darkness and depression. The collection
also references the geography of waste by contrasting the glamour and
wealth of Paris’ illustrious center with the disparate poverty visible at
the periphery of the city where second-hand garments were gathered to
create the collection.
This contrast is represented within the garments with features such
as buttons made from the bottle caps of premium French champagne
collected from an exclusive restaurant in the heart of Paris combined
with second-hand clothing waste from the flea markets at the city’s
outskirts.
Figure 5
The Glam and the Gloom. Photo: Maison Briz Vegas, 2012.
As in the work of Kouyaté and Margiela decades earlier, bringing this

waste into Paris as the fashion capital becomes an act of defiance. Just
as places of waste influence the creation of Maison Briz Vegas collec-
tions, the presentation of collections tie back to the places that helped
create them, often in an intentionally disruptive manner. The presenta-
tion of The Glam and The Gloom collection in an exclusive showroom
during Paris Fashion Week was accompanied by installation of a flea
market scene featuring a bench heaped with second-hand clothes,
assorted bric-a-brac arranged on mats, and weathered cardboard signs.
All of these items were collected from the Porte de Montreuil flea mar-
kets (see Figure 6). The intention of bringing dirty discards from the
fringes of Paris into a clean and sophisticated designer showroom in the
heart of the city was to provoke and draw attention to waste or, to use
Mary Douglas’ term, “matter out of place” (Douglas [1966] 1984, 35),
and to highlight the distinction between the origins and the outcomes
of the collection.
Logos, brands, events, destinations and pop-culture references often
feature on t-shirts and are all markers of place and time. Maison Briz
Vegas designers carefully select the t-shirts and logos that will feature in
the new garments and use them as added narratives within collections
and to provide a clue to their history and provenance. The third collec-
tion, a resort collection called Trashtopia, used surf-brand and holiday
souvenir t-shirts from destinations—including Hawaii, Vietnam and
Ecuador—sourced from local thrift stores in Brisbane, where the collec-
tion was created (Figure 7). Clothing from surf brands such as Billabong
is commonly worn in Brisbane and nearby coastal regions, such as the
Gold Coast, where surf-culture is popular. On the surface, the mood of
the Trashtopia collection was a happy and nostalgic beach holiday, with
designs inspired by mid-twentieth century style. However, the sentiment
is more cynical. Spurred by the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Trashtopia
depicts a dystopia: a summer holiday on an overheated planet at an
island paradise—but a paradise atop an island made of plastic rub-
bish (Figure 8) Hence the use of surf brand and holiday souvenir shirts
Figure 6
The Glam and The Gloom showroom presentation. Photo: Maison Briz Vegas, 2012.
Figure 7
Trashtopia destination t-shirts. Photo: Maison Briz Vegas, 2014.
Figure 8
Trashtopia postcard. Photo: Maison Briz Vegas, 2014.
has deeper significance. The seemingly playful prints designed for this
collection also present a darker narrative: turtles swim amongst rings
from plastic bottles, a school of fish-shaped plastic soy sauce containers
swims through seaweed, and a happy holidaymaker dives into contam-
inated water. The playful yet uneasy nature of the prints was intended
to depict the gloom of waste in a humorous manner, telling a story of
waste that can be read as an environmental commentary.
The Trashtopia collection was presented as a beach installation cre-
ated in a gallery space in Brisbane (see Figure 9). A floor resembled
sand, silhouettes of seagulls dotted the walls, and props including an old
beach chair, umbrella and inflatable toys were arranged in the setting,
which was accompanied by a laid-back tropical soundscape. However,
punctuations of litter unsettled the scene: a chip packet, a beer bottle,
plastic gelato spoons and empty pearlescent soy sauce fish containers.
The displacement of this waste invited people to notice rubbish, to look
for more of it, and to see it in a new way.
An aesthetic of waste and decay are also communicated through
Maison Briz Vegas’ promotional images and the places where garments
are photographed. In Paris such sites include a public telephone cov-
ered with graffiti (as shown in Figure 4), abandoned and littered urban
spaces, a cracked and peeling concrete wall, amongst the stalls of used
clothes at flea markets. In Brisbane it included the setting of a typi-
cal backyard suburban swimming pool area, though a neglected one.
Figure 9
Installation view of Trashtopia. Photo: Erika Fish, QUT Marketing, 2014.
As described earlier, Maison Briz Vegas’ work can be situated in a tra-

dition of fashion designers exploring waste and displacement through
their work. The early artisanal collections by Martin Margiela made
from second-hand clothes and other discarded materials were presented
in marginal and transient places of Paris, including abandoned car
parks and a Salvation Army depot. Similarly, XULY.Bët reworked
second-hand clothes sourced from the flea markets and presented col-
lections in urban spaces of Paris, such as inside graffitied trains (Rovine
2005). This displacement and then elevation of waste speaks to what
Edensor (2005) describes in his analysis of waste aesthetics in aban-
doned industrial ruins and the objects situated within and around these
sites. As they decay and are altered by environmental conditions, these
sites and objects “transform their character,” “become charged with
alternative aesthetic properties” and “offer ways for interacting other-
wise with the material world” (Edensor 2005, 311).
Waste, Materiality and Time

Artisanal and couture processes that Maison Briz Vegas employs are
painstaking and time-consuming. However, “taking the time” to trans-
form the discarded, worthless, lingering and problematic “waste”
material of the everyday into new garments elevates this waste and
instates a new aesthetic value. Dirty, worn-out, banal second-hand t-shirts
are “chosen,” then cleansed and transformed by being washed, dyed,
unpicked, hand printed, re-sewn and embellished, but still show signs of
their former life. For example, the unpicked cover-stitching on a t-shirt
leaves a pin-prick of holes. When carefully unpicked and washed, the
raw edges flute to form a decorative hem for further embellishment.
This careful treatment, which raises these t-shirts from the dead, takes
much longer than mass-production did to create them. This reinven-
tion of second-hand t-shirts is also seen in the punk-style practice of
Angela Johnson as well as the traditional handwork techniques utilized
by Alabama Chanin (Brown 2010). Other salvaged items that Maison
Briz Vegas treat and incorporate into their garments include bottle tops
and lids, fish-shaped soy sauce containers, netting used to bag fruit and
vegetables, and plastic shopping bags (Figure 10). This appropriation
of consumer rubbish has its lineage in the punk, DIY aesthetic of Vivi-
enne Westwood’s early work, with her use of bleached chicken bones
and plastic bottle tops (Westwood and Kelly 2014). Other fashion
designers continue this practice, for example, Eleni/Lynn with rubbish
bags and used party banners, Adriana Bertini and expired condoms, or
K. Robbins Originals and woven aluminum cans (see San Martin 2010).
One Maison Briz Vegas garment in the Trashtopia collection employed
a couture technique to create fine “feather work” from plastic shopping
bags (Figure 11).
Figure 10
Hem detail, Trashtopia. Photo: Maison Briz Vegas, 2014.
Figure 11
Feather detail, Trashtopia. Photo: Maison Briz Vegas, 2014.
Significantly, it is largely the time and work invested in the trans-

formation of banal materials that makes this kind of fashion practice
“poetic,” in which design as a process of renewal informs the practice.
The poetic use of waste is closely linked to the time and care taken to
renew and revive broken things: the use of waste poetically may be
as linked to process as final product (Figure 12). Many designers who
work with visible waste may also be motivated by a desire to rescue
Figure 12
Hand-carved block printed label, hand finished edges and bottle cap detail, The Glam and The Gloom. Photo: Maison Briz Vegas,
2012.
rubbish that appears poignant in its abandonment. To the viewer, these

poetics of practice may not be immediately visible, but to the designer
they may be a crucial force through the work, as artist Tom Pfannerstill
describes his From The Street series in which common objects found on
the street, such as squashed aluminum cans, cigarette packets and paper
coffee cups, are carefully reproduced as painted wood carvings (http://
tpfannerstill.com/FromTheStreet.html). Notions of time and work in-
vested are also highlighted in the work of Margiela, in which cards
listing the amount of time taken to transform his pieces are displayed
beside them, a comment on time and labor as luxury (Black 2012). As
Vinken (2005, 142) notes, “time clings to Margiela’s work,” the time
taken in production as well “as traces, which time leaves behind in
the fabric in the course of use.” Perhaps many designers who take a
“slow fashion” approach share this intention, allowing for more time to
engage with materials and thus develop an intimate relationship with
the material world. To return to Edensor’s (2005, 325) notion of waste,
confronting the material nature of rubbish allows material engagement
that is in “a more playful, sensual fashion than is usually afforded in
the smoothed over space of much urban space.” Maison Briz Vegas uses
the materiality of clothing and consumer waste in a tender yet playful

manner, transforming rubbish so it can be seen in a different light. By
incorporating waste items into garments and presenting them in a high-
end fashion context Maison Briz Vegas attempts to disrupt the new,
clean and “smoothed over” surface of the fashion system—where waste
does not belong, is inconvenient, destructive and ideally should be effi-
ciently eliminated.
The Aesthetic of Waste

The patina and worn-in softness of second-hand cloth itself holds
a poetic quality, and since the 1980s has been an aesthetic returned
to again and again by designers, at times using authentically “old”
fabrics, as in the case of Margiela or XULY.Bët, or at times creating the
appearance of age in new textiles. Visvim is a contemporary Japanese
label that has a beautiful aged quality to the textiles with an artisanal
aesthetic. However, although the brand uses second-hand patchwork
quilts and patched indigo kimonos in its artistic fashion displays in
high-concept stores, not all the products are made from recycled textiles.
Rather, the company develops fabrics that appear weathered—the worn
aesthetic rather than the actuality. As Finn and Fraser (2014) note,
“remake” has become yet another fashion aesthetic in which products
appear to be made from recycled textiles but are not. Part of the reason
for this is clearly practical—scaling up bespoke refashioning practices
holds challenges—yet in part it relates to consumers’ expectation
of newness. Consumers expect a pristine, new garment, and instead
accept engineered rips, tears and mending appearing in new garments
as a highly constructed aesthetic. Actual use of second-hand textiles or
recycling clothing to create a new fashion line poses many commercial
problems: it is a very niche customer who is prepared to spend
significant money on a designer product that is made from poor recycled
material. Additionally there are major problems when trying to scale
the production of garments hand crafted from second-hand garments.
Practical problems include negotiating odors, stains and tears, as well
as the availability of materials and how to scale up the production
of unique garments when there is little standardization to the base
materials used. It is necessarily a labor-intensive and skilled process, and
does not make economic sense. In the case of Maison Briz Vegas, this
is precisely the point being made. However, for the commercial fashion
system, the worn and wasted aesthetic may be simulated in new garments
in order to provoke the poetry of waste without the authenticity.
The process and practices employed by Maison Briz Vegas are similar
in nature to Bennett’s notion of enchantment. With Maison Briz Vegas,
the “enchantment” carries through from the gleaning process (where
flea markets and op shops are incredible sites of enchantment for the
designers), the caring and cleansing processes, the play that is involved
in the design and making process, and then the presentation of these
garments and objects that are at once new but bearing the signs of
their past lives. Bennett’s enchantment relates to the Maison Briz Vegas
design process and the designers’ experience in working with mundane
discarded items, as well as the end product and presentation—which it
is hoped will elicit a mood of enchantment in others. Therefore, it is as
much about process—gleaning the objects, caring for them, reinvigorat-
ing them—as it is about outcome.
Given that a practice which privileges actual, visible waste is con-
trary to fashion’s modus operandi, other issues emerge regarding the
use of second-hand garments. For example, when logos from the gar-
ments’ previous lives remain visible in their new life, this may raise
dilemmas regarding appropriation and copyright. In several Maison
Briz Vegas garments, old logos on t-shirts are intentionally visible and
carefully selected in order to strengthen the concept of each collection,
in a tongue-in-cheek and subversive manner (see Figure 7). This kind of
appropriation of another brand’s logo connects with culture jamming
and the political comment of Adbusters, or in the playfully anti-con-
sumerist Logo Removal Service (LRS 2015), a service to remove brand
logos from second-hand t-shirts. Although separate from the notion of
waste, issues around copyright highlight the problems and political na-
ture of these practices on the margins, and suggest why designers may
be loath to reveal the origins of waste materials.
Conclusion
This article has explored several views of waste and wastefulness. In
one view, waste is associated with guilt and damage, and is something
to be eliminated through improved practices and processes. In another,
waste is examined as holding the potential for beauty and symbolism.
When observed in this light, wasted and abandoned things hold the
power to provoke a feeling in the viewer of not necessarily guilt but
rather tenderness, as these unwanted objects become a metaphor for
life’s transience. Both perceptions of waste may resonate and intertwine
within fashion practice. Many designers valorize waste and keep it
visible and vital in their work. For some designers this practice is con-
nected to environmental activism and a problem-solving approach to
tackling fashion’s endemic waste. Yet at the same time the aesthetic of
the worn and the wasted has become another strand of fashion’s visual
language in which the visibility of old clothing or rubbish gleaned and
treasured can be associated with the pragmatics of recycling as well as a
poetics of renewal. In the discussion of Maison Briz Vegas’ approach to
elevation of waste, the work stems from a lineage of practice that may be
used as part of sustainable fashion narratives, but can also be distinct from
it. Instead waste is used to tell social, cultural and material n
arratives—
encounters between the human and material world. The rational
problem-solving approaches as well as the more lyrical reflections on

waste are each important in developing rich and meaningful engage-
ment with waste and its meanings within fashion practice.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Carla van Lunn for her reflections
on practice as well as frank and thoughtful feedback throughout the
writing process. As founder of Maison Briz Vegas, Carla’s philosophy
and sensitive approach to materiality permeates this paper. The authors
would also like to thank Kathleen Horton for her initial feedback on
early drafts, and invaluable mentoring role as Carla Binotto’s PhD
supervisor.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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Fashion Practice

The Journal of Design, Creative Process & the Fashion Industry

ISSN: 1756-9370 (Print) 1756-9389 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rffp20

The Poetics of Waste: Contemporary Fashion

Carla Binotto & Alice Payne

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17569370.2016.1226604

Published online: 13 Oct 2016.

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Waste and Wastefulness

pragmatic, dimensions of ethics can offer meaningful contribution to

Fashion Design and Waste-making/Making with Waste

includes the intangible waste of labor and creative energy expended

rubbish “disappearing” is part of our daily perception of reality. When

Evans (2003, 37) refers to Margiela’s work as “melancholy derelic-

Maison Briz Vegas and the Enchantment of Waste

designers can overshadow what may be at the heart of a practice—

Binotto joining van Lunn in Paris to develop the second collection. A

Through the use of second-hand clothes and waste items as prima-

Placing Waste/Places of Waste

As in the work of Kouyaté and Margiela decades earlier, bringing this

As described earlier, Maison Briz Vegas’ work can be situated in a tra-

Waste, Materiality and Time

Significantly, it is largely the time and work invested in the trans-

rubbish that appears poignant in its abandonment. To the viewer, these

the materiality of clothing and consumer waste in a tender yet playful

The Aesthetic of Waste

problem-solving approaches as well as the more lyrical reflections on

Assmann, Aleida. 2002. “Beyond the Archive.” In Waste-site Stories:

Douglas, Mary. (1966) 1984. Purity and Danger. London: Ark.

4th Global Conference Fashion: Exploring Critical Issues, Mansfield

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