Turning Scraps Into Fashion

By Matthew Cook

My inspiration for the designs and the challenges that I solved would be the scrap fabrics, particularly the negative patterns that come out of making high-fashion ball gowns, and then using those scraps to make a different type of garment to go from a day to night look. So, it would be using the same fabrics as the gowns, but then offers the customer the ability to choose something that is still high fashion, but more of an everyday or casual piece.My idea came from seeing how much fabrics I was wasting and my addiction for wanting to save every little piece of scraps that I have because I will think in the future that I will have some type of use for it. With these particular pattern pieces, they were the full cut out, but the negatives, of the huge pattern pieces I made from the gowns. After that, my process was to piece them together sort of like a quilt or a puzzle and see what shape it makes as a garment when I laid it down flat on the ground. Some of the garments were symmetrical and others were asymmetrical, it all depended on the way it curved to the body in order to make or alter the shape of the human form. So, whenever you are thinking about throwing something out, just remember someone’s trash is another person’s fashion.

Matthew Cook is from Alton, IL, a small town next to Saint Louis, MO. Matthew a Fashion Design BFA major and will graduate in 2020. The main focus of his work is mainly couture and ready to wear with an eclectic edge and an answer to social, economic, and sustainable problems.