Shape the Invisible is a project of fashion recycling and sustainability made by the brand Zara, which within a year collected 7,100 tonnes of old garments, footwear and accessories. Inditex’s recent Sustainable and Responsible Manufacturing report (May 2006) stated that Zara’s core value is protecting the environment and natural resoources apart from providing high quality products to its customers. The company has been focusing on incorporating sustainability into the Group’s supply chain, through the creation of Inditex’s Green Code initiative.

The project consisted of a collaboration of fashion students from different universities across the globe who, with the same objective, created garments from recycled, used or left over materials.

Paul Wetherell’s work, especially his ‘Noodled’ series of photographs with art director Kimberley Norcott and photographer Ben Budgen in support of Mission Blue, where they both pair black and white portraiture with wave photography. My response to his work will be analysed later on.

Mission Blue is an organization that inspires action to explore and protect the ocean. Founded by Dr. Sylvia Earle, her wish to ignite public support for marine protected areas, called hope spots, large enough to restore the health of the ocean—what Dr. Earle calls the blue heart of the planet. (Somewhere magazine)

This concept board that I called Plastic Dry shows the type of environment, clothing and mood of the main editorial shoot. I wanted to focus on the idea of the plastic age and fast fashion vs slow fashion

Looking at the sustainability research page of the University of Creative Arts in London (UAL), I read about some projects and collaborations that were very well thought and very creative. As for example the LCF x H&M Clothes Well Lived project, where students of London College of Fashion Design and other courses had to be imaginative and think of ways of promoting a more conscious way of buying clothes and emphasize the current material waste and pollution, creating different window installations, that were displayed throughout the Fashion Recycling Week.

The relationship we have with our clothes has changed greatly over the last century, but arguably the most dramatic shift has taken place just within the last two decades. We have entered into an era of extreme production and consumption, many of us falling into a mindless cycle of acquiring and discarding garments instead of taking the time to truly value and use them. The project asks students to understand first hand the complexities and challenges we face as an industry and as a society and in return they show that they are the future creatives who will drive positive change.

Consumerism in the fashion industry.

What became my biggest inspiration for the project is the works from the photographer Jackie Nickerson. She makes photographs that examine identity and the physical and psychological condition of working within a specific environment. Her photographs challenge conventional notions of making portraits and landscapes and offer a more engaged view of her subjects. (Jackshainman.com)

Her collaboration with fashion editor Neil Kalonji for Another Magazine AW2017 really appealed to me; the shadows and shapes created by the plastic, the lighting and composition, the movement of the clothes and the volumes are very interesting. Nickerson’s latest body of work, Terrain, takes a broader view, focusing on labor and the synergy between cultivation, workers and the environment. These photographs drew my attention and gave me the idea to work with plastic, an element that, in my opinion, represents the consumerist society that we live in, and that, placed in a natural environment in a creative way, can express that antithesis between the speed of industrial/urban life and the innocence of nature.