Cradle-to-Cradle Denim: Fringed Dress and Poncho Design

Abstract

There are only a limited number of examples of sustainable fashion practices utilizing creative manipulative techniques that can enhance a product’s quality in consideration of functional, expressive, and aesthetic aspects to revitalize the discarded clothing and reduce waste. As Parsons (2015) stated, some contemporary design scholars consider that applying techniques of manipulating fabric in designing garments constitute a way to eliminate fabric waste. The purpose of this design was to revitalize discarded clothing by adding value through upcycling while producing a sustainable novel design made with secondhand denim. The inspiration for this design was previous contemporary works of upcycling denim and 3D texture created by professional designers such as Issey Miyake and Junya Watanabe. The structural reconstruction method involved changing the material’s identity by manipulating fabric via the application of surface design techniques, such as North American smocking, weaving, fringing, and laddering to create three-dimensional texture (Wolff, 1996).