Evangelion of Plastic Soup

It is finally over. I have gotten my thesis done and that has mainly been the reason for my absence from.. well almost everywhere.
But it's done, and I couldn't be more relieved. The last couple of days have been hectic since nearly everyone in our class has been sewing non-stop and printing and pressing their thesis books.
It's been plain insane.
 
The thesis or "graduation project" as we ought to say, contains a research part that we started already in November last year and based on that research we were asked to design a collection of 20 pieces.
I chose to research plastic and its effects on our environment.  As a visual inspiration I used one of my favorite anime: Neon Genesis Evangelion.The research started out with the idea of an apocalyptic world that was caused by mankind. I thought that with that idea, plastic would serve as a great example of environmental disaster waiting to happen. Basically, I started studying plastic, what was the status of plastic waste in the world and how it can be recycled into fashion/fabrics/textiles.

The research begun by looking for information about plastic waste and its environmental impact. Huge amount of plastic gets thrown into landscapes each year and because it does not biodegrade, it contaminates our surroundings and food.  Also it was quite disturbing to find out that there are huge garbage patches floating in the Pacific Ocean. I honestly had no idea that there was such a thing until I learned about it in "Trash to trend"-workshop. Even though plastic can be recycled into new products, there is still far too little of recyclable raw material collected to make it count.

The hardest part of the project was to find textiles made out of recycled polymers. It took me a while, but finally I did find the fabric that I needed, but was surprised how little of such textiles are on the market for a basic consumer. It seems that this kind of textile is just starting to arrive on the market.  
  

Cover shot by Jirina Alanko

 

Bio plastic

One fun part of the project was making my own plastic. I found out about making bio plastic at home and tried it out in hopes of making fabric like pieces that I would've used in the final collection, but after numerous tries of producing it had to give up. The material  just wasn't strong enough to be used as a cloth. With a little more time, there could have been a chance of getting a bigger and maybe even a stronger piece made, but because it took bio plastic a huge amount of time to dry and with limited amount of drying trays experiment was not that successful. But the pieces that I did manage to make felt quite unbelievable. The texture resembled stick hands, the 90's toy.It was fun, but not usable.
I did make a couple more plastic recycling experiments, but in the end decided to use only one. 

Prototypes and patterns

Fabric samples and prototypes

 Because there was so little recycled fabrics to use, I decided to use a bit of virgin polyester and acrylic textiles as well as excess synthetic fabrics obtained from different companies. Luckily I got just the right colours for my collection. Which were pink, dark purple, bright green, orange, white and black. Since my collection was to be unisex I tried to keep it as androgynous as possible, but in the end decided to use a more masculine silhouette because it suited the silhouette of the animation well.

We also had a photo shoot with our collections and it was tremendous amount of fun. It was a course led by Lauri Eriksson. Each of us got a  photographer partner with whom we developed a concept for the shoot and a week later it was photo shoot time. But about that, later.

In the end I was pleased with my collection despite all the adversity during the process.  

Final garments