Maternity dress
February – July 2009

A maternity dress service. This dress has more than one life within itself. After pregnancy the wearer can cut the pattern of a romper and a doll from the dress and these can then be made. All the material can be reused, so there will be no waste. When the garment is completely worn out the wearer can hand it in at a clothing collection bin from a clothing recycling company. This company will make sure the fabric will get a new life. The garment, including its stitching, is made from organic cotton.

Approach
Refinity and Eco Couture started a service with which a garment can be altered by the customer. With this Refinity shows that you do not always need new material to make something, but that materials circulate within various production processes. Refinity chose a maternity dress because this garment has a short lifespan and the woman is conscious of the (harmful) world she will put her child in. With this garment it is particularly important that it has a new life after its life. That is why Refinity consciously chose a material that is available in both fabric and stitching yarn, because it takes a lot of time to loosen the stitching yarn. Because of this it is possible to cut up the fabric, after which new yarn can be spun from these fibres. For the pattern of the romper we made use of laser etching instead of silkscreen printing. Consequently no paint will be left behind on the fabric. This way it will also be possible to cut up the material in one go. The material for the maternity dress had to be soft. 

Refinity could choose between casein (milk wool), PLA (corn), Soy bean, Tencel and linen. The first three are made from food and can better stay food, because that is more needed that clothing. Just like Tencel they are not yet available as yarn. The available linen felt rough and was too chunky knitted. That is why we chose organic cotton. Two downsides of this material are that a lot of water is needed during the production process and that the material has to be transported over a long distance. ​

Photography Savale, Hair & Make-up  Annelies van Oosterum, Models Anne and Jasmijn Bobeldijk