Portfolio of fashion presentations: Mal de Mer + See and Seaing

Background: These works, one the presentation of a collection of garments, the other a curated exhibition, investigate the recycling of plastic as an aesthetic and methodological possibility for fashion design practice. They take as their material provocation the single-use plastic bag, and as their intellectual stimulus Barthes’ essay on the mythology of plastic. They complement such approaches as Elisa van Joolen’s EVJ project of caring for recycled plastic tote bags as a communal responsibility. The brief for both projects was to show how an object of luxury might transcend the modesty of its materials. Contribution: Mal de Mer, referencing the Titanic both as a visual motif and metaphor for the seaborne disaster caused by plastic waste, was a collection of prints in cheap fabric and jewelry, and plastic bags saved from trips to Paris, all of which served as material for garments to show luxury as an aesthetic phenomenon, not material quality. See and Seaing, an exhibition curated by S!X, invited participants to explore, through various media, objects and garments produced from recycled plastics. The design brief was to reimagine used plastic and produce works that connoted rarity and preciousness rather than utility and disposability. Significance: Mal de Mer was shown at the Melbourne Fashion Festival. The respected fashion critic Jan Breen-Burns noted, “Twenty years on, Melbourne’s iconic deconstructionist duo still flummoxes critics, conjures new concepts of beauty and cool.” See and Seaing was shown at Melbourne Design Week (MDW) and is a further response to an initial project part funded by RMIT University and the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade in 2018. The exhibition received 600 website hits around the world. The project contributes to the wider discussion on Plastics and Sustainability, an exhibition accepted in 2020 for MDW but paused due to the pandemic. S!X were asked to resubmit for 2021 by the selection panel for MDW.