Delighted to be the recipient of the inaugural Northern Beaches Environmental Art & Design Prize.

Thank you to everyone especially my co-collaborator Nina Smith for realising such a beautifully crafted garment.

The shirt utilises food waste and zero waste pattern cutting techniques to reimagine overlooked waste materials. The DYEVERT shirt demonstrates the potential of sustainable practice within textiles by applying circular design processes. I identified waste streams transforming discarded food waste into a dye resource to colour the shirt. Each stripe in the shirt is hand-painted using a traditional textile technique revealing multiple colours after dyeing the cloth in vegetal waste. Nina Smith then applied zero-waste pattern techniques to minimise waste in the garment design and construction process.

Both designers are responding to the systemic issues of fast fashion and the landfill of textiles. The ongoing collaboration demonstrates a less impactful garment that can be recoloured multiple times with other food waste to reactivate the stripes. The garment can eventually return to the earth and decompose.