Before visiting the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian I didn’t relaise how much waste we create from making clothes. The exhibition was made up of three designers, Luisa Cevese, Christina Kim and Reiko Sudo. They all focus at sustainabilty when creating clothes. I had thought about the ‘waste’ that comes when I threw out a top, or ruined a piece of clothing, but not about any other waster. But apparently there is a lot of waste being created even before the product itself, from the end of rolls of fabric to just dying something the wrong colour. In the US, 75% of this is already recylced into materials which are used for industrial purposes, like matresses. Even from those clothes that we then donate to charities or thrift shops, 80% of these end up going to clothes recyclers as a lot of it can’t be resold. I found this really surprising, I always think that when I donate my clothes (which I do with everything unless it’s really ruined), it goes to someone else and continues it’s life.

One of the designers, Reiko Sudo, is Japanese and is focussing on a very particular part of reducing waste. Using silk she extracts something called Kibiso in Japan (it has different names all around the world). This is actaully part of the shell of the cocoon, rather than silk itself, making the most of every part of the cocoon. Like when people eat every single part of the animal. It’s UV protective and water resistant, so it was a great material to make into yarn, however they stopped doing it because it wasn’t seen as cost effective. So Sudo is bringing this back to try and use as much of the cocoon as possible and reducing waste.