Fashion's obsession with trash Why the relationship between fashion and trash as a critique of reality inspires desires

"It looks good even with a trash bag." The ironic way people used to say in the 2000s, to refer to someone who enhances a cheaply purchased garment, exalting it as if it were couture, never could be more relevant than now. But today everything has a different meaning. The relationship between fashion and trash lies in the inspiration of garbage bags-see under Balenciaga bag or Kanye West Yeezy x GAP collection-synonymous with the demolishing force of what fashion actually is, namely the second most polluting industry contributing to the destruction of our planet. There were numerous tributes on the runway, from Moschino to John Galliano and Alexander McQueen. But let's see them in detail. 

The collection designed by John Galliano for Dior, in 2000, was the big breakthrough. Indeed, the couturier had created clothes made from newspaper prints, paired with plastic bags similar to those in the supermarket, in reference to the homeless people of Paris, long observed by the designer as he ran in the morning along the Seine. Alexander McQueen, too, had brought his collection The Horn of Plenty to the runway in 2009, with models swathed in sculptural dresses walking among trash and wearing headdresses made from bags and cans abandoned on the street. But no reference to the homeless here. It was rather a criticism by the designer of all the garbage that we human beings find ourselves producing every day, leaving it in every corner of the Globe's cities without respect. Jeremy Scott has given us a third different version. For Moschino FW17 collection, he literally dressed models in garbage, giving new life to cardboard boxes, shower curtains and black bags. An antidote, according to the designer, in reference to waste, as if to incite recycling. Recycling that, by the way, we wear every day. Just think of the designer labels, even low-cost ones, that choose to create their clothes from discarded materials, from fishing nets abandoned at the bottom of the sea to plastic reworked into high-tech materials that do not create problems of microplastic emissions even during washing machines. In short, it is not surprising that an ordinary accessory of our everyday life is revisited by the creativity of designers, as long as this gesture is done with respect and not as an insult, not only in price but also in ethics. 

The conclusion? Trash fashion is, in short, a statement. Controversial certainly, funny at times, but that is the point. Fashion itself is, after all, defined by many as trash, a frighteningly topical metaphor.