Monday, January 5, 2009

Plastic Bag Fashion and More

These boots are the work of Chilean industrial design student Camila Labra, and made mostly of recycled plastic bags.

The boots are built by fusing several layers of plastic polyethylene bags together to create a thicker and more resistant material to work with.

Their interior is covered with quilted piqué cotton fabric to make them more comfortable and prevent too much heat. According to the designer, the boots are impermeable, flexible, light and non toxic.
The line of boots is named Dacca (aka Dhaka) after Bangladesh's capital, one of the most polluted with plastic bags in the world (the bags were banned in that city since 2002).

Made after special orders, the boots are sold for 22,000 Chilean Pesos (45 USD).








Photos: Guillermo Gomez via Dacca blog.


Australian artist, Mark Vaarwerk, reuses plastic bags and other throw away domestic plastic containers such as shampoo bottles, to create beautiful jewel-like brooches and rings.


A Safeway plastic bag dress.

I have included a DIY video on how to make plastic fabric. Enjoy! Visit the website: www.treehugger.com for more fantastic info.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

GREAT idea!! I guess you could leave the bags large rectangles and use 4 of them to get 8 ply in a larger size. She didn't tell what temperature the iron was on.

I saw a woman on (??Martha Stewart or one of the AM shows, Today?) talking about making shopping bags out of old T-shirts. The inside was layered with duct tape. She had written a book that had the pattern. I watched demo, but didn't get how she did the bottom. From my running/triathlon days, I have scores of t-shirts that could be well used this way.

Happy New Year!