Intensive Use
Some garments are worn almost daily. They become both a backdrop to - and practical facilitator of - our lives and reflect true resourcefulness. Their features speak of an ethic of extended iterative use.
Facebook evidence
"I had a clothing line and was doing production in Thailand… and was helped by a Japanese designer… we created a kinship. This is one of the dresses that she designed and I used her leftover fabrics to help create parts of my collection. So we did a materials exchange and a cultural exchange… It’s my favourite dress and I’ve worn it every other day and I wear it 3 times a week; it’s a lot of wearing, I’ve worn the hell out of this… a 100 wears a year. I’ve had it since 2008 and it must have gone through a hundred washings and it’s still alive. Even if you click on my facebook account, you can see I am wearing this dress a lot. It makes time seem really different; when I look back on photos everything seems to appear in the same era because I was wearing the same dress: camping trips, trunk shows… The clothes are the same despite the fact that time has passed. I feel no pressure to keep it fresh as I get older. There’s a younger looking picture in the exact same dress and an older looking picture but what’s the difference? It’s just my life, it’s just the way my Mom did it: same jacket 20 years. It’s almost unusual, so it’s almost more special that way."
San Francisco - July 2012
Photograph by
Paige Green