The Scraps exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York explores the creations of three artists who, through the creative reuse of textile industry waste, produce unique objects.
The exhibition Scraps, Fashion Textiles and Creative Reuse at the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York, running until April 2017, addresses the issue of textile industry waste through the creative reuse work of three international artists: Luisa Cevese, Italian, Christine Kim, American, and Reiko Sudo, Japanese.
At the centre of the exhibition, curated by Matilda McQuaid and Susan Brown, is the so-called "preconsumer waste", post-industrial offcuts — that is, textile waste produced by manufacturing companies before products reach consumers. This amounts to an immense quantity of material that includes fibres too short to be woven, end-of-weaving remnants, selvedges, fabric offcuts, dyeing or printing errors, cutting waste from garments, defective products and unsold stock. These are new materials, in other words, that the industry does not use.
When it was common to make clothes at home or have them made by a dressmaker, textile waste rarely went to waste: it was used for repairs or replacements, or transformed into cushions and patchwork quilts. This picture changed radically in the Western world, with a sharp acceleration from the late 1950s, and clothing manufacturing has since become almost entirely industrial, shifting to developing countries where production costs are lower. As a result, the creative potential of waste has turned into a strongly environmentally polluting potential.
Second only to oil, textile and clothing production is the most polluting industry in the world. The United States alone is estimated to produce fifteen million tonnes of solid waste per year (2013 figures). The textile industry has the longest and most complex production chain of all manufacturing sectors and generates waste at every stage of processing: from fibre spinning to weaving for fabric production, from dyeing to printing, through to the cutting and sewing operations required to transform fabrics into consumer goods such as clothing or furnishing textiles.
93 per cent of "preconsumer" waste could be recycled, according to various studies, but in developing countries waste materials are sent to landfill or incinerators because it is economically more advantageous to do so. In the United States, textile manufacturers recycle 75 per cent of production waste, which is transformed into lower-value products such as felt for insulation and padding for the furnishing industry. The challenge is to find ways to reuse this waste by transforming it into high-value products, and thereby encourage manufacturers to change course.
Through more than 40 works, the exhibition explores the key aspects of sustainability, such as the efficient use of materials and resources, the preservation of local craft traditions, and the integration of new technologies into the recycling process. The works on show include table accessories and bags reshaped from silk waste and selvedges by Luisa Cevese, panels produced from recycled jamdani saris by Christina Kim, and a variety of fabrics created with "kibiso", a luxury fibre developed by Reiko Sudo using discarded parts of the silk cocoon.
"Telling the inspiring stories of three female entrepreneur designers from three different continents helps to bring into focus the critical point of the human and environmental costs of fashion consumption," says Caroline Baumann, director of the Cooper Hewitt Museum. "While also offering viable solutions for reducing waste and raising awareness."
Luisa Cevese gives new life to offcuts, encased in transparent polyurethane, to create one-of-a-kind pieces and home accessories under the Riedizioni label, founded in 1996. A self-taught designer and head of research at a major Italian textile company, Cevese began creating fabrics for fashion and interiors in 1984, working for companies including Dolce & Gabbana, Hermès, Chanel and Comme des Garçons. After gaining a certain knowledge of the plastics sector and its technology, she began combining textile waste with plastics of various kinds, and from this Riedizioni was born.
"I love working with waste. When I created Riedizioni, the idea in my mind was that plastic is an eternal material, so I had decided to use it to give a product a longer life, and in some way discourage consumerism. And, at the same time, I wanted to give plastic a more human, more unique appearance. The quality of the plastic material used is important for the final product. It can be harder, thick, thin, opaque, transparent, recycled or not: it offers products durability, strength, flexibility, waterproofing and structure."
Through her fashion label dosa, Christina Kim systematically reuses and recycles production offcuts, employing them to create new products. She works across the world, particularly in India with craft communities that use traditional techniques, collaborating with local artisans whom she engages in long-term projects. Recognised for her global and sustainable design practices, Kim was named by Time magazine as one of the best innovators of the year in 2003 and received the Innovation in Craft award from Aid to Artisans in 2006.
In 1984 Reiko Sudo founded Nuno, a textile design company at the forefront of innovation that combines Japanese craft tradition with advanced technologies. Her projects to reduce waste include the recycling of polyester garments to create new fabrics. These have been the subject of exhibitions around the world, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the Textile Museum in Washington and the Fowler Museum at UCLA in Los Angeles.
The Scraps exhibition celebrates the beauty and creativity of reinventing waste materials that hold no economic value, while also championing traditional textile processing techniques and the value of craftsmanship. And through the success stories of the three artists' businesses, it demonstrates that recycling makes economic sense too.