There were so many fantabulous frocks floating down the runway the other week at the Seattle RE Store Trash Fashion Show, we really wish we could have gotten a closer look at them all.  We also relish the creative recycling stories behind the raiments.  Here’s one of our favs:

 Dance Party Postal by Lorraine Kwan, photo by John Cornicello (modeled by Erin Pike)

Last year, trash fashion designer/artist Lorraine Kwan posted a Mail Art Call on her blog and with the Postal Art Network, requesting that fellow postal artists send her their visual views on clothing, fads, and fashion by making their envelopes a fashion statement and stuffing them with tissue paper,wrapping paper and ribbon that had been printed with any kind of advertising and logos, plus labels cut from old clothes.  She then proceeded to make a dress with everything that was sent:

 Dance Party Postal by Lorraine Kwan, photo by Face52          (modeled by Erin Pike)

Fashion has labels, labels have logos.  Products are packaged and wrapped.  Send me that paper, mail me your trims and I’ll make you a dress with a cap.  Lorraine asked her Postal Art friends to gather up their shopping debris and mail it to her in a decorated envelope.  From Latvia to Argentina, China to the Ukraine, they dug down deep and topped off that mail with their leftover bits of dressmaking trims.  Fashion house ribbons reinforce the seams of the manila envelope bustier that has been lined with paper-mache gift wrap.  For twirling flutter there is the option of the detachable mail-art dancing tails.  Shoebox brand-name tissue, embellished with miles of recycled ribbon, adds sparkle to the sleeves.  The full flirty skirt of global art-i-stamp poster paper sports a produce mesh crinoline and Japanese department store underskirt.  Who made the handbag?  How much was the necklace?  No need to ask, its labeled!  Are you ready to skip toe-to-toe over the dance floor in your padded-envelope platforms?  A perky feathered cocktail cap tops off this international finery.  The rosette is courtesy of Ms Blum’s fashion class at the Art Institute of Austin, Texas.  Want to see everything that came in the mail?  Go to paperand postage.blogspot.com  Recycling shouldn’t be FAD or FASHION; make it a way of life wherever you live …

And while we here at Olympia Dumpster Divers are proponents of Mail Art, we loathe the junk mail … Seattle Public Utilities has information about what to do with junk mail HERE