An international fashion research project exploring the 'craft of use'

Material resourcefulness

Garments are fusions of materials and energy brought to the body in myriad configurations, yet the dominant force in fashion, consumerism, tends to value only a narrow spectrum of fashion activity. The practices of material resourcefulness broaden this view and show a burgeoning testing ground of an alternative flows of fibre, fabric and product.

Ex-skirt

"This was a second hand pair of pants that I bought and I just had gotten into the habit of turning all of my ex-skirts into pants when they don't fit me anymore. Because my hips sort of expand, and you know, the waste line doesn't fit so I just cut them up them up into skirts. It is, kind of remade and then adjusted it over the years, back and forth, as a gained or lost weight. So I'd had them for about, in some form or another for eight years."

Vancouver - January 2013
Photograph by Jeremy Calhoun