Recycled Fashion

By Sarah Boucher

This project came to me in a dream sometime during the chaos of 2020. In Guam, we have the most beautiful beaches and water, but the shoreline is unfortunately covered in trash. Whether it’s been left there by visitors, washed up from the water, or blown out of the many bins lining the sand, I do my best to pick up garbage whenever I’m looking for sea glass.

With that thought of reduce, reuse, recycle in my mind, I decided to find something that I could do with the waste I found on the beach. I’m already used to taking sea glass off the beach and repurposing it into jewelry and art, so this was just the natural next step.

I started gathering some items together and making sketches. The garbage I used was a black trash bag and some chip bags of various sizes. I washed and sanitized everything, grabbed some tools, and got to work.

My project was released for Earth Day 2021. My goal was to show what you can do with trash when you think outside the box. “Be noble, think global” was my mantra during this process.

Though I’m no fashion designer, I’m proud of what I made and even more proud of what I got out of this. We need to look toward our future as a planet and make the active choice to do better. It’s a global crisis, but it starts locally and personally.

Photographer: Patrick Camacho, Model: Ixora Guerrero, Designer: Sarah Boucher

This article appeared in the Beachcombing Magazine July/August 2021 issue.