We humans are autonomous, we make our own decisions, or so we think. Watch this documentary The Men Who Made Us Spend to learn how our ‘free choice’ is easily manipulated so a few makes lots of money while our environment is junked with unnecessary resource use and waste.

Investigative journalist Jacques Peretti explains how planned obsolescence, the organised creation of dissatisfaction and computer-aided design have cultivated competitive consumerism throughout capitalist society.

The documentary includes an economist saying change during the past two decades has seen the average American’s clothing consumption double from 34 pieces of apparel per year to 67 – equating to a brand new item of clothing coming into their wardrobe every 5.4 days. Once the garments are no longer ‘socially valuable’ they either go into the waste stream or the global apparel trade. 

Personal observation of clothing churn in Australia is what led me to be spending 2014 on this Sew it Again counter-culture project, refashioning reject/dated/waste/passé clothing into something of our very own using resourceful, creative, traditional skills.

By rescuing reject clothing and stuff from op shops and flea markets over many years – and accelerated since 2011 and the Fashion for Floods fundraiser – I’ve gathered wardrobes of cast-offs for the intrinsic value I see in their natural fibres, colour and design. 

I’m not suckered by the latest greatest on-trend consumer culture fashion Jacque Perriti so eloquently exposes in The Men Who Made Us Spend – I’m creating my own style, re-using what is readily available and to hand.

We drink a fair bit of coffee and instead of tossing the 1kg bucket of waste coffee grounds, I decided to see how it works as an eco-dye – by putting it in a muslin bag, boiling it, then dunking two cream garments in the solution.

Sew 199 is the result (it’s a no-sew actually). What was a cream-coloured rescued crochet wool vest is now coffee-coloured and more appealing to my senses (it even smells like coffee now!). The cotton skirt took the coffee dye less evenly, but I don’t mind that and think they work well together. I’ve just dunked these garments in the coffee and dried by the fire – so am unsure how much off the colour will stay when I wash them. I can report that the tea-dyed wool tights I’m wearing in the photo above (from Sew 190) have been washed and the colour sticks, so the coffee should too. And there’s plenty more coffee for re-dye if needed.