Cigarette Butt Couture
Alexandro Guerro, a fashion designer from Chile, has found a way to make use of used cigarette butts by turning them into designer dresses, you wouldn’t even think for a second it actually was once a toxic addictive.
The idea was first hatched as a thesis project when he was studying to be a fashion designer. Guerro looked for concepts that were not yet done and turned to cigarette butts for inspiration.
If you wonder though if the clothes smell, there seem to be no reason to worry as these are first cleaned, purified and worked through a process of dissolving. Then they are shredded and dried. After the cleaning process, they are also dyed in several colors. The cigarette butts are made of fibers and they feel like threads. The butts are then spun together with natural sheep wool.
The clothes made out of this material are supposedly durable and feel like any other clothing made of wool, which means they keep the body really cool in the summer or warm in the winter.
So far, the designer has already created a dress, a hat, a poncho and a sweater out of this. He was also able to extract soap from it, can you imagine how ingenious this idea is?
Excerpts from the interview at Greenmuze:
Where do you get the cigarettes?
For now, we collect cigarettes from the streets or with the help of our smoker friends. But we expect to create a major campaign where we can get cigarette butts from pubs, restaurants or other places where there are smokers.
Is the clothing durable?
The clothing is as strong as spun wool…. and it will last as long as any other hand-woven clothing item.
Is this something you plan to mass-produce or is it haute couture?
Every garment is unique and handmade. So it’s haute couture, we want our client to have a special link with the garment they choose.
We want to mass produce the Mantis philosophy and business, but while always retaining the exclusivity of every garment.
Via Greenmuse
Recent Comments