So a recent assignment for class was to make a garment/accessory out of recycled materials. Trying to think of what materials to use, I thought about bottlecaps, (interesting enough), about bubble wrap (didn’t have any–but would still love to have this dress to pop while wearing), and about used matches (would have to waste them in order to get enough–defeating the point of recycling), until I remembered about the broken laptop I acquired a few weeks ago when a resident of my building tried to discard it. Being the collector of useless things that I am, I took it, and lo and behold, it actually proved to be quite useful (for once).
To begin, I took the laptop and a broken printer I had also acquired and completely dismantled them, a process which involved some deft manuevering of a screwdriver and some not so deft bludgeoning with a baseball bat. I was left with a lot of clunky pieces of plastic, and no clue how to make them into a garment. A few days later, after some skillful avoiding of the task at hand, I returned to the project and devised a plan to create a bodice out of the laptop screen. The biggest problem I encountered was how to get it to fasten, and I came up with a sort of corset back, giving the bodice a very Xena-warrior-princess-fell-through-a-time-portal-into-a-world-ruled-by-robots feel (to actually see this happen, one merely has to watch Battlestar Galactica).
After I made the bodice, I had really gotten into the character of the woman I was creating, and being overambitious, decided to create not only a skirt for her, but a handbag as well. The skirt was constructed out of recycled plastic and the inside of a keyboard, as well as the keys of the laptop. The handbag was made out of the outer shell of the keyboard. The skirt also had a bustle made from the top of the printer–a futuristic shout-out to that wonderful butt-enhancing relic of the 1800′s.
Here is the dress, worn here by my lovely model Laura (who is also depicted in the painting below).
A close up of the bodice:
And a bustle shot:
