Gathered Cloths: Textile Art Meets Climate Action
From Project Origins to Climate Week NYC 2024 and Beyond
Hi there! Every once in a while, I’d like to reintroduce myself to new influx of subscribers. After LA Climate Week and Climate Week NYC in September, where I got to showcase both my textile art and upcycled fashion garments, I believe it’s time to do so.
So once again, hi there, I'm Mira Musank, a textile upcycling artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. My design hub is called Fafafoom Studio. I reclaim discarded textiles and extend their lifespan by upcycling them into one-of-a-kind garments or recirculate them within my local community. Since 2018, I approximately diverted 275 lbs. (124 kg) from landfills. I frequently collaborate with artists of various disciplines and organizations that are focused on sustainability, circularity, and climate solutions. I believe it's critical for us to collaborate, share insights, and inspire each other as we develop iterations of imperfect solutions.
I talked about the highlight of my experience during LA Climate Week and Climate Week NYC on the previous issue. This time, I’d like to focus on my ever-evolving climate textile art Gathered Cloths. Enjoy this newsletter issue!
During Climate Week NYC, I had the opportunity to showcase my Gathered Cloths project during Fusion Fashion Tech Summit. When I arrived at the Oakland airport, bringing a suitcase full of ruffled cloth pieces and a full box of safety pins for my flight to New York last month, I realized this was the first physical Gathered Cloths showcase outside of San Francisco Bay Area.
And when I arrived at Fashion Institute Technology - Kathie Murphy Amphitheater to deck up my exhibition table with 70+ ruffled cloths I managed to stuff inside my suitcase, I was hit by a sudden wave of imposter syndrome and inferiority complex.
What if people saw these bunch of ruffled cloths covering a professional dress form and a 6-feet long folding table, and just laughed or snickered? For goodness sake, it is FIT, the place where fashion talents are thoughtfully honed and nurtured, located in a city that embodies fashion and culture like no other.
After all, my fashion training was non-existent - my relationship with fashion and textiles are intuitively honed throughout the trials by fire during my post-college adult years. My design and sewing skills are accumulated from reading sewing machine manuals, watching YouTube tutorials, receiving in-person pro tips from supremely talented fashion designer friends, to joining private crafting groups of local neighbors. It was nothing but a structured journey.
Thankfully, what happened was the complete opposite. Instead of judgement or scorn, I saw eyes full of curiosity, wonder, or nostalgia. I heard hums of approval, exclamation of awe. The colorful nature of Gathered Cloths are amplified when more ruffled cloths are attached together.
The visual attraction was undeniable, and people want to do more. To come closer, to touch a ruffle, to run their hand through the ruffles, and even share a story or two about their own relationship with textiles.
Everyone had the same question: where do I source the materials from? From the moment I started creating the first ruffled cloth until now, I used reclaimed textiles and sewing remnants, all locally sourced. The abundance of discarded, yet still high quality fabrics and clothes are astounding, and it is becoming really easy to find discarded materials. You just have to know where to look.
And when you have done something like I did for a while, there will be people reaching out to you so they can ship you discarded materials. The problem is growing, not only overseas but even in my home state of California. According to California Product Stewardship Council, textile waste is the fastest growing component of California landfills, comprising 3% of total landfilled waste, and the 5th most common material overall.
As textile waste mountains keep rising, the awareness of textile waste also keeps growing. With it, the Gathered Cloths project is also becoming more significant as both discussion starter and climate action catalyst as time passes
The Origin
Gathered Cloths project started in 2021, when I first joined Climate Creative’s “Waste to Art” Spring cohort. The non-profit organization champions climate artists and their unique radical response to raise awareness and encourage direct actions to various climate challenges.
During the interview with one of the cohort facilitators, I pitched a personal cohort project idea of creating an ever-growing textile art project that is 100% made out of textile waste.
At that time, I had a big box full of fabric remnants and cutoffs, most of them from my neighbors. They were the aftermath of my Covid-19 response project, where I joined forces with some neighbors to sew face masks and scrub caps for the local healthcare community and beyond.
Largely inspired by the devastating pictures from textile waste receiving countries like Ghana or Indonesia (sources: The Or Organization, Phys.org) I wanted to create an ever-evolving climate art that showcases the growing nature of textile waste problem. Living in a country privileged enough to not see mountains of waste every day, Gathered Cloths challenge the audience perception about whether the colorful ruffled cloths are things of beauty, or trash.
Objectives
From its conception until now, Gathered Cloths project has 3 main objectives:
raise public awareness of textile waste and the overall textile lifecycle
Invite the audience to contemplate what it means to reuse, repurpose and upcycle
encourage more discussions and direct actions to minimize waste / develop sustainable habits in everyday life
The secondary objective is more intrinsic: to contemplate object impermanence and adaptivity. The circular process of Gathered Cloths brings this secondary objective front and center.
Circular, Iterative Process
I designed Gathered Cloths to have an iteratively circular process. The materials to create Gathered Cloths’ ruffled pieces are always pre-owned, never new. Various sizes of ruffled cloths are made exclusively made with leftovers from sewing projects, remnants, and fabric cutoffs, all locally sourced from residents of the Bay Area.
These ruffled cloths are then temporarily connected with safety pins to assemble a one-of-a-kind object (most of the time, as garments). They are then exhibited for a time before disassembled completely, reverting them into a bunch of ruffled cloths once again.
With each iteration, newly created ruffled cloths are added. This means there’s a continuous cycle of making, assembling, and disassembling ruffled cloth pieces. With each iteration, the more complex the assembly step becomes due to increased number of pieces to attach. Moreover, some pieces would have wear and tear, so they need some maintenance work, usually in the form of ruffle strip addition or replacement.
Here’s a documentation of how many ruffled cloths are involved in each iteration from 2021 to now:
1st: 7 ruffled cloths
2nd: 15 ruffled cloths
3rd: 21 cloths
4th: 37 cloths
5th: 44 cloths
6th: 63 cloths
7th: 84 cloths
8th: 100 cloths
9th: 120 cloths (including 8 existing cloths that were repaired)
Showcase Highlights
Since 2021, Gathered Cloths project has gone through various physical forms. Its first public appearance happened during Climate Creative Summer 2021 showcase. The 5th iteration, with 44 ruffled cloths total, underwent several temporary assemblies to fit the style and personality of the wearer.
The 8th iteration showcase, with 100 ruffled cloths total, involved a model (Nik) decked out in Gathered Cloths from head to toe and a grand piano covered with Gathered Cloths.
Starting from the 9th iteration, I started using Gathered Cloths in workshop settings. The Hamlin School’s Earth Day 2024 celebration featured “Fashioning Textile Waste” workshop, where K-8 students were invited to create fashion items (garments and accessories) by assembling Gathered Cloths. With their teachers as models, the 90+ students made more than three complete looks with 120 ruffled cloths.
To see more details about how each iteration came to be, as well as off-shoot community projects that happened along the way, feel free to check out the Gathered Cloths project page!
Virtual Reality
In addition to physical showcases, Gathered Cloths project also has a Virtual Reality counterpart. In 2022 to 2023, the 3D object scans of the 6th and 7th iterations were part of Climate Creative’s The Climate Gallery project, which I recapped in great detail.
Using the “immortality” of these 3D object scans (as opposed to the impermanent nature of their physical counterparts), I recycled them for more Virtual Reality scenes, most notably during a creative retreat with artist Kimberly Kuniko last year.
And earlier this year, using edited VR scenes, I created a short clip to drive textile waste awareness using Gathered Cloths.
On the second half of 2024, however, there’s something new in the works. I want to create a more interactive VR experience with Gathered Cloths, so I teamed up with VR/XR Experience Designer Iris Pan to bring it to life.
During Climate Week NYC, we talked about the importance of starting this project together with Founder of woosh woosh Martyna Zastawna during the Fusion Fashion Tech Summit.
While there’s no demo version of this interactive VR experience yet, the visitors were able to enjoy the physical exhibition of Gathered Cloths. It’s really wonderful to see so many people interacting with the temporary installation of Gathered Cloths, sometimes sharing their stories and ideas while doing so!
What’s Next: Remake Bay Area’s Walk Your Values Fashion Show
On Thursday, November 14th, 2024, I will be participating in KQED x Remake Bay Area’s Walk Your Values Fashion Show. This will mark the first time I’m combining both my upcycled garments and Gathered Cloths to create 7 runway looks.
All 120 cloths (2 missing ruffled cloths pieces were replaced, 24 existing cloths were repaired) will be spread out to be temporarily assembled to become a garment. Alongside the upcycled fashion pieces, this showcase will definitely be one-of-a-kind!
Here are my sketches for a sneak peek. Ssssh, don’t tell anyone!
Right now, I’m still in the process of crafting all 7 looks, and I’m looking forward to finalize the garments during the fitting session.
Come Join Us!
If you are interested to see Gathered Cloths in a fashion show setting, this is your chance! Tickets are available now for $28.75 ($25 ticket + $3.75 taxes and fees), so go get it! I hope to see some Fafafoom Studio Newsletter readers during Walk Your Values fashion show.
This fashion show will be my final upcycled fashion showcase for the year, and there’s no future showcase planned for now. However, if you’re interested to bring Gathered Cloths showcase in your area in 2025, send me a message and we’ll talk!
Thank you for reading; until next time,
Mira Musank
I do love your gathered cloth constructions. It has a strange enjoyable nexus between opulent and extravagant and second patchwork vibes. I love the contrast and I always imagine it must have a hefty weight to wearing it. Part comforting weighted blanket..part..something else?