Clothes with Stories

CLOTHES WITH STORIES is an interdisciplinary art-science project funded under the 'Wellbeing in a Throw-away Culture' initiative, part of UCL Grand Challenges. It investigated the implications of a throw-away fashion culture for the environment and provides interactive art-based outputs to engage the public with this topic.
This project aims to provide innovative opportunities for self-reflection and criticism, to grow awareness of the status quo in the fashion industry and encourage the public to see their individual impact on the environment and learn ways to reduce their impact by making small steps. To this end, we first conducted a literature review to find key facts and figures about clothing, and then communicated these in form of a 360-degree illustration. Subsequently, we bought second-hand t-shirts from charity shops, printed our originally designed logo on them, and brought them back into circulation by donating them to charity shops again.
- UCL Grand challenge team, Dr Gesche Huebner, Dr Farhang Tahmasebi, Solmaz Farhang

A 360-DEGREE TOUR AROUND THE HOUSE
To visualize the facts and figures and turn them into tangible knowledge, I created a virtual tour around the house. This interactive 360-degree illustration is made of hand drawings illustrations on a cubic map such that it flawlessly surrounds the observer’s viewpoint at the centre of illustration. A wireframe 3D model of the house was created in Rhino (the 3d modelling tool) to guide through the illustration. The resulting artwork was then transformed into an equirectangular spherical map suitable for virtual reality viewers.

CLOTHES WITH STORIES ARE TO CHERISH
An Innovative outreach plan: From charity shops to charity shops
Due to Covid-19 lockdown we had to resign our outreach strategy: We purchased second hand t-shirts from charity shops around London, screen-printed our original artwork on them at home, linked them to our informative 360-degree illustration via strung tags, and donated them back to various charity shops to redistribute them across London as “augmented” second-hand t-shirts.
The designed logo first and foremost aims to illustrate how the value of an object – here a t-shirt – increases with time as one makes memorable experiences with it. So, the logo encourages the consumers to cherish a t-shirt with stories rather than seeking satisfaction by renewing their belongings. The logo illustrations are also tightly connected to nature to remind us that living in a harmony with our habitat could be a better choice for our well-being.
Due to the Covid-19 restrictions in 2020, the purchase of 2nd-hand t-shirts and the printing process faced a few challenges. However, by the end of the full lockdown the t-shirts and the required equipment could be purchased and a dark room was set up at the artist’s home to print a total of 20 second-hand t-shirts together with their informative tags that included the link to this blog post and the artist’s webpage for the virtual around the house tour.