We all wear clothes—not just for coverage or comfort, but to express identity, values, and how we wish to be seen. If clothes are a vessel for our identity, what traces do we leave behind? Even when discarded, clothing holds traces of its former wearers—marks, stains, and invisible stories embedded in the fabric. In today’s fast-paced fashion system, such traces often make second-hand clothing undesirable, reducing it to deadstock.
This project reimagines deadstock not as waste, but as raw material rich with narrative and potential.
Although second-hand markets extend garment lifespans, much of the clothing still ends up in landfills or incinerators. The global second-hand trade—primarily moving from the Global North to the Global South—frequently displaces the issue rather than resolving it. Many garments are sorted and resold, but vast quantities are ultimately deemed unusable. Category C (the deadstock) items from Cirtex, a textile sorting center, form the basis of this work, reflecting the shared urgency of addressing textile waste.
This collection is part of a broader material research project, with each of the three objects representing a distinct deadstock stream: Utility (the unusable), Hygiene (the unworthy), and Relevance (the undesirable). Shredded textiles from I-did are combined with techniques like braiding, knotting, and patchwork, preserving visible fragments of original garments to retain the material’s history and embedded narratives.
These pieces highlight the many faces of deadstock, offering space for overlooked narratives of obsolescence and renewal. To learn more, explore the labels accompanying each piece.
