Botanical Dye Project

Inspiration

Fast fashion generates detrimental effects to the environment during its production, manufacturing, transportation, and even disposal. However, because of its convenient and inexpensive merit, many overlook its destructive qualities. Many neglect how disastrous it can be to our earth. If it is hard to reduce the consumption of fast fashion, I thought, ‘Why not reuse it?’ The first fast fashion item that came into my mind was socks. It may seem like an unexpected fashion article to work with because people, at first, tend to correlate fashion with tops, bottoms, and maybe to fashion accessories such as shoes or bags, while socks are treated as a comparably trivial item to give their attention. However, socks are perfect examples of fast fashion. People purchase a bunch of mostly white or single-colored plain socks to wear inside of their shoes because they are not a fashion item that is visible a lot of the time. We lose a quite amount of their socks in the laundry and also throw them away so easily because it is not too hard to buy three-dollars-worth of cheap, white pairs of socks from a nearby store without effort. Therefore, the idea of reusing such socks to create a new item that is useful to people daily seemed like an innovative way to expand that spark of my idea for this project.

Idea Sketch

Cutting used socks and recreating them into different but new items.

Out of all possible options, I decided to create a pouch as a mock-up.

Moodboard

Ideal User

There is not really a set ideal user for my project. If my idea was just to make a pouch out of socks, the ideal user would be mostly women. Pouches are a lot of the times considered the must-have item for women. Many women carry around pouches in their bags to store make-ups, disposable menstrual products, hand cream, mirror, gum, hair ties, perfumes, and etc. Pouches allow women to effectively store their belongings in an organized way. However, my idea wants to expand further. I think so many items can be remade with used socks. From larger items such as blankets, pillow covers, stuffed animals, tote bags, and table covers, smaller items such as pouches, airpod cases, coasters, cup holders, pencil cases, beanies, scarfs, mittens, gloves, and even a mini pocket on a t-shirt can all be made with renewed socks that we wear today. If such is the case, the category of ideal user has no boundaries. So many items can be used by all people with various races, ages, genders, classes, and occupations. If pouches are more targeted towards women, men can use remade beanies or cup holders. If coasters are more targeted towards upper age people, younger aged people can use remade airpod cases or stuffed animals. Therefore, my ideal user would be “all people” (and maybe even animals, too).

Hypothesis

In order for these items made with used socks to be accepted as attractive items, aesthetic colors need to grab the audience’s attention. The colors should vary based on the items made, but pouches should go with a pastel tone to give a cozy, warm, and safe feel for the ideal users, women, to store their necessary items. In order to create such colors with a natural dye, different fruits seem to be the perfect materials. Blueberry will create pastel purple; strawberries and raspberries will create pastel pink; and oranges will create light orange or or pastel yellow.