Every day we eat and we dress. We know fresh, varied, nutritious meals enable us to survive and thrive as human beings but the recent series The Men Who Made Us Fat unmasked the shocking truth about our consumption habits. We are over fed while under nourished. This British documentary by Jacques Peretti exposes how corporations devise tactics to sell us more and more unhealthy addictive processed food. Two-thirds of us are overweight and at risk of chronic diseases. This downward spiral of socially irresponsible businesses exploiting human weaknesses and addictions for commercial gain is disturbing. 

In the same way our food intake is manipulated by commercial interests, our clothing wants are too. We allow ourselves to be victims of fashion trends, constantly feeling the need to have the latest greatest so we keep up with the Jones and look sharp. Yet we often feel dissatisfied and need to shop for more.

The extent of clothing waste in the name of fashion is astounding, and my Sew it Again project is a simple effort to demonstrate what we can do as individuals to reuse existing natural fibre clothing. Used clothing is not waste – it is resource that can be harvested and reused in imaginative and creative ways when you have the skills and allow time and space to do so. Continue reading →