College students bring denim delight to V&A Dundee!

The students, who are in their second year of the HND Textiles course, were challenged with making clothes from waste denim, using a mixture of hand and machine sewing techniques, to raise awareness of climate change.

Denim was chosen as a fabric because waste in the industry is a serious concern. It takes 7000 litres of water to produce just one pair of jeans and the dyes used to produce the classic indigo shade are incredibly polluting.

Lecturer, Ruth Conisbee, designed the project because of her own passionate interest in saving the planet.

“I have been embedding sustainability in my units for quite a few years so I am keen for the students to reuse fabrics as much as possible in their work to divert waste from landfill. We based the project on making dresses from waste materials to help raise awareness of the issue.

“I’ve been so proud of what they’ve achieved. The first year of their course was during lockdown and they were forced to work from home, but their creativity and enthusiasm has been outstanding.”

And the results have been so good, V&A Dundee are running a three day exhibition of their work called ‘Denim Reworked’ from the 13th to the 15th of May.

For more information about the exhibition, please visit https://www.vam.ac.uk/dundee/event/391/denim-reworked