Oh My Gawd! She Wore the Same Clothes All Year

We call it wearing the clothes from our cupboard,she calls it art. Can we survive without the retail buzz that we get from shopping? "Can a person wear, in heavy rotation, the equivalent of one suitcase worth of clothing for an entire year and survive and be "normal" in modern America?" To examine this question, for one long year the artist Alex Smith Brown wore only the clothes from her closet; "I wore only things I made myself (clothes, jewelry, shoes, underwear, bags, everything) and my source materials were clothing items already in my possession - a completely closed loop, 100% recycled from my own closet." It is the ultimate anti-fashion statement. Last year she wore the same brown dress for an entire year (this girl is tenacious), she called it a "one-woman show against fashion", so this new recycling project was an offshoot of that experience. She wondered if she could claim some sort of complete ownership over an aspect of her life by designing and making everything in her wardrobe.

How did she do it? She wore 2 pairs of trousers, 2 skirts and a pair of shorts. Six tops, one fleece and one coat plus three pairs of shoes and some odds and ends completed her ensemble. In her journal/blog she outlines her trials and tribulations. Her home-made recycled shoes, made from some old leather trousers were a problem so she switched them. Creating new clothes from old was much more time-consuming than she had thought. And her conclusions at the end of the experiment--a person can wear the clothes in her cupboard for an entire year and live happily. But a person does get bored when everything is hand-made and recycled. And shoes start to smell when you wear them for a whole year. :: recycling project :: Via :: Hippyshopper