My ongoing sustainable clothing project "+ Koth" materialized through my longtime love of cyanotype prints and secondhand clothing.
For a while, I lived very close (and therefore became a regular visitor to) a Goodwill Outlet (often colloquially referred to as “The Bins,”) where large bins of unsorted, donated clothing are wheeled out for customers to pick through for a limited time, ultimately purchasing their "picks" by weight. Even spending one afternoon at the bins, the so-called “last stop” for Goodwill donations before the landfill, one is confronted with the sheer, existentially overwhelming volume of unwanted, discarded clothing that exists. I began to contemplate how, beyond just finding clothing for myself, I could possibly utilize this (never-ending) supply of donated clothing as material for creative output.
I see myself as a bit of a bottom-feeder in the bins food-chain. My favorite "picks" are often well-made, interesting or high-quality pieces of clothing that still have “good bones” but that are just a bit too flawed or worn-in to be worthwhile for the resellers and for the (in reality, few) folks there who may be shopping for themselves. I then “upcycle” these discarded clothing items by embellishing them with my own designs using sun-reactive dyes, covering stains and discoloration that originally deemed them disposable, oftentimes also replacing buttons or performing other mending. This gesture of care breathes new life into clothing items that have had a rich life already, and due to their “flaws” were destined to be discarded.
I can’t help but contemplate the significance of re-dignifying stained clothing. As scholar Jenni Sorkin writes “cloth holds the sometimes unbearable gift of memory. And its memory is exacting: it does not forget even the benign scars of accident: red wine on a white tablecloth, water on a silk blouse, dark patches beneath arms on a humid summer day.” I see my interventions as a means of collaborating with a garment’s history (thus, "+ Koth") and disrupting the churn of easy disposability that defines the mainstream consumer’s relationship to clothing.