01 February 2016 // Puck Gall //Amsterdam

//TRASHTHETIC

 

I have always been quite a messy human being. I like dirt, thrive on chaos and will always spill something on my shirt. To others it might look like I just don’t care enough but I think that the opposite is true.

I believe that there is a certain beauty in the messy things of life. Therefor I want to encourage everybody to let go of the stiff idea of slick neat beauty. Because let’s face it we live in a world filled with trash so we can better start celebrating it.

 As we are trashing our planet we still think we can save a little by recycling. H&M just started an impressive campaign about recycling clothes. Now you can shop a little lighter because you can dump your old textile in a collecting box in the H&M nearest to you. Don’t get me wrong it is great that H&M stimulates the re-usage of textile. There are many great products that can be made from old textile. But it is a bit twisted. Shopping more new stuff because we can just ditch the old is not really green in my opinion.

 In my opinion we need a serious change of esthetics. Instead of constantly fancying new products we need to embrace the value of our old stuff. When we learn to appreciate the beauty of broken and damaged goods maybe our need for new will decrease. Take for example an old sweater that has been with you for years, the colors might have faded a bit, there is probably an old spaghetti stain on it from a great dinner and it has a few small holes from the moths in your closet. This is probably the sweater that you wear at home because it still feels amazing and has e certain sentimental value, but you will never wear it to a fancy party simply because it is not chic!

This is where it goes wrong. The sweater really is a scruffy champion but we don’t associate that with beauty and class so hurray up to the shop to buy a new shiny one.

Off course I don’t want to force anyone to live life looking like a homeless person but a good reevaluation of the status of our older belongings seems right to me. When we hold on to things that are a bit damaged and take the time to repair or pimp them I guarantee an increase of personal value. And if we have a fancy party we should just give that old dirty dress a spin.

 

When it comes down to the trash we already dumped on our lovely planet, we just have to look at it with different eyes and think about the person who once bought it and look at its gained beauty. Imagine that we will soon wrap Christmas gifts with old plastic bags or mosaic our entire bathroom with broken dishes. Personally I get super exited from this, but we still need to get the collective trashthetic going.

 

Photographer Vilde Rolfsen presents us plastic. She has photographed old plastic bags she finds everywhere. The plastic bag has a big trash factor off course. But she makes them look like fantastic other worldly landscapes. Thank you Vilde! I will never look the same at a plastic bag ever again.. Let’s get trashy!

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