TEXTILES.ORG
One company’s textile waste is another’s art medium. At Milan Design Week in April, the “More or Less” exhibit by artist Maarten Baas stopped people in their tracks with a denim-covered jet plane, the fabric being waste from the G-Star RAW brand.
“Every year in Milan I witness the tragicomic dialogue between green design and mass consumption,” Baas says. “When G-Star approached me to collaborate, it was the perfect opportunity to focus on this relevant duality.”
The gigantic art piece is metaphorical rather than practical, but the artist’s work has pragmatic applications as well. He also gave quirky “flare” to G-Star denim textile boards from Kvadrat Really, creating jeans cabinets out of jeans themselves. Kvadrat Really upcycles end-of-life textiles into boards laminated with melamine, which are made in Denmark. One tabletop takes 60 T-shirts out of the waste stream, the company says.
G-Star RAW customers can receive free repairs at certified tailors or bring their worn-out pieces to the G-Star stores in Europe to be recycled into new jeans or art objects. In a program expected to pilot in July, Netherlands customers will be able to trade in their secondhand jeans on the company’s website. G-Star has a goal of repairing, reusing or recycling 1 million pairs of jeans by 2030.
Baas is known for creating functional objects with a playful or rebellious sense of humor. The jeans cabinets are available made to order from the artist, and following the exhibit, the plane became part of the G-Star RAW art collection at the company’s Amsterdam headquarters, the architecture of which was inspired by an airplane hangar.