As a designer it's important to think about every aspect that goes into creating a product. For me personally, one of the most important factors is sustainability. In America alone 10.5 million tons of clothing is sent to a landfill every year. This is due to many factors, but mainly boils down to poor production, manufacturing, and design.
Environmental implications created by the fashion industry has completely changed my perspective on how I want to design products. As a designer I feel a responsibility to create ethical and environmentally friendly products that will be durable, functional, and beautiful. Today I wanted to share an up cycling project I recently did to show how you can drastically turn something old and broken into something new.
A few weeks ago I realized that I own a ridiculous amount of purses. This realization led me to question why I have invested so much of my money into so many different types of bags. My purse collection varies from different colors, sizes, and materials. This inspired me to design a purse that could have multiple uses, functions and that was also sustainable. As a result I dug into my closet and found a few damaged items I could re purpose.
The images above are two examples of items I used to up cycle. From the jacket I took the outer fabric apart to create new pattern pieces for the purse & from the bottom image I removed the handles and then sanded & painted them. I next used some scrap fabric, fabric paint, and a potato to create a new design and texture on the fabric.
I then cut each piece of fabric into a pattern piece for the purse. I constructed two bags total, making each reversible for maximum amount of looks. Lastly, I attached grommets on each side of the bag so that it could easily un-clip from the handles, allowing me to interchange the bags depending on what I am wearing. & just like that I had two new up cycled purses with many different functions and looks.
In the long run sustainability can greatly help our environment and also allow you to get many uses out of a single item. With a little creativity you can easily take something old and broken and turn it into something beautiful.
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