Press | Canberra Weekly December 2012

SOURCE: Canberra Weekly

Suzan Dlouhy is a final year Bachelor of Design student at CIT, and for the past year has been creating her fashion garments from other people's scrap material.

The theory behind Suzan's idea was grown from her work experience with Eternal Safari/Sebastian's Sister, a pair of popular local designers.

'After working there and having this experience I'd seen all the waste that they had, and they were keeping it because they still wanted a future potential use for it. That's kind of where most designers are at who are practising, they see the environmental need, and they're not sure where to go with it,' said Suzan.

Offering to the take the scraps off their hands, Suzan said she ended up with 11 bags of fabric, which she said weight about 300 kilograms.

That's enough to sustain me as a business for two years at least,' Suzan said.

'I started the idea of what happens if you don't preconceive a garment? If you don't go "I'm going to draw it, and then make it, and then pattern make it and produce it". What happens if I have one piece of fabric and I have to use this piece, how do I use it?'

Suzan said she created six garments last semester out of the scraps, and has not even made a dent in the collection yet.

'It's about re-contextualising those garments, not seeing it as worthless scraps, but seeing it as actually even more valuable because they're limited,' she said.

Suzan will be showcasing her designs at CIT's end of year fashion parade, Kinetic, on 1 December. For tickets, visit www.outincanberra.com.au