I made my first non-remnant coat in 2016. It was the result of a conceptual challenge I set myself, asking if it is possible to design a pattern that uses the entire width and length of the fabric (cut from a meter of a certain width)? Can I come up with something that is easy to make, yet looks good and is functional? I am not and do not want to be a fashion designer, but I have been dealing with clothes since forever – I use them as a metaphor or a tool for criticizing the condition of the world. In the years 2003-2004 I made a series of 100% recycling, i.e. blouses with very long sleeves that are a link between the people wearing them. They were about the energy constantly circulating between people, about the impossibility of living outside the network of interconnections and dependencies. In the work Smuggled Whisper (2007) I embroidered messages from hypothetical seamstresses from China, Bangladesh or Thailand hidden in clothes from the world’s largest chain stores.

The idea for a residue-free design was also created in response to the wave of voices about excessive consumption and the production of garbage – waste. My coat design is possible to cut and sew without creating any waste, often remaining during the production of clothes. I am still developing this topic with students of design, both at the Faculty of Art of the Pedagogical University of Krakow, where I work, and during workshops abroad, e.g. at ESAD Matosinhos, Portugal. I sewed three series of coats with the Razem Pamoja Foundation and the Shirika cooperative during my stay in Nairobi in 2017-2019. The ones that I present to you have been sewn entirely by me, from pieces that are the ends of a bale of fabric. All coats are made of wool, so naturally warm. Each piece is unique and unrepeatable. I added my logo to them – a cross-eyed eye, sometimes as a larger decorative element, sometimes a smaller one. The coat itself is a manifesto of a certain attitude and awareness of striving to reduce waste to the necessary minimum, an expression of efforts to build the world around us from what has already been produced, to recover, reuse and repair. As I once wrote during my residency in the Bródno Sculpture Park:

“It’s about realizing that our clothes are not out of context entities, […] [but] part of a larger process, from creation to decay. The beauty of fabrics made of natural fibers results from their biological life cycle. Fabrics have their origin in a seed, then through the work of human hands in a plant harvested and transformed into yarn, in a woven material and a sewn garment; then they spend time with us, and, growing old and decaying, they return to the earth.”

The situation is different with clothes with the addition or made entirely of plastics that are derived from oil, which is plundered from the Earth’s resources. It is produced in a […] unethical way that bypasses the labor rights of those who produce clothes. Such fabric quickly deteriorates and does not decompose naturally. Taking care of clothes, repairing them, we do not treat them as static objects; we can feel a connection with […] the people who made these clothes, and with the entire ecosystem from which the materials come and to which they will return. In this way, we can oppose the mindless culture of buying and throwing away. Be involved in the rich circulation of materials and lives!”. I hope that the coat I made will serve you for a long time! However, if necessary, I will also repair it.

Malgorzata Markiewicz

photo: Joanna Czaczkowska