Opinion
At the Cooper-Hewitt, Christina Kim Turns Scraps Into Treasures
THE DAILY PIC: At the Cooper-Hewitt, Kim's fashions use cloth that others might throw away.
Blake Gopnik
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THE DAILY PIC (#1739): Most people don’t know that the production of fabric and garments is one of the world’s major polluters. I myself learned that just recently in “Scraps,” an exciting show at the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt design museum in New York. It highlights three high-end designers who go out of their way to take the first of the three Rs—“reduce”—as seriously as they can, by using every last scrap of fiber that comes from their industry.
Christina Kim was my favorite of the three, since she starts out by giving work to the Indian artisans who make the jamdani saris that Kim turns into Western garments. And then she keeps reusing every single bit of off-cut from her designs, as in the skirt at left in today’s Pic, down to the tiny dots of pattern that got sewn into the shawl that is on the right in my image.
Oh, and one other thing: Kim’s “reducing” yields textiles and clothes that are more exciting than most of the ones we get from the fashion world’s wasters. (©dosa inc.)
For a full survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.
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