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"Conceptually and physically I try to bring connection and empathy into my design work.
By connecting people to the practice of craft and the processes of manufacturing I aim to increase the value of the maker, the process the finished product."
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Caryella
Handmade in Australia
Ethics and sustainability are an integral part of Therefore.
Operating in a slow fashion model, creating wearable and adaptable garments, using fine fabrication, artisan techniques and ethical human interaction, with the intention of creating empathy between the garment and the wearer, leading to increased product lifetime and a change in the way we consume and discard clothing.
Acquired Significance Project
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This conceptual project takes the most familiar and warn item of clothing in the modern world, the denim jean, deconstructs and conceptually re-imagines both the garment and the processes used to produce them.
This project does not literally depict how jeans are constructed, however the reality in labourers experiences is not far off. In big production houses all over the world, underpaid workers stitch literally the same seam or line of stitching over and over for sometimes more than 14 hours a day, day in day out for many years of their lives. Putting myself in this situation to make this conceptual denim jean has challenged me physically, mentally and emotionally. Sewing these jeans for only about 6 hours a day for three weeks straight, my body and mind seriously suffered from the monotony, and after the 300 hours it took to complete them I was definitely looking and feeling exhausted and frustrated.
The aim of this project was to get a more intimate and realistic sense of the labour conditions that dominate the fashion industry today and to raise awareness of this, encouraging people to question how the brands they support have their products produced . We need to start questioning, question how everything around us is made, question who made it and how they were treated, question what will happen to it when you no longer want it, question why you find the need to replace it with new.
How are your clothes made?