"The tops of shampoo bottles can be very decorative," says Jenny Bannister. "I'm a real bower bird. I like colourful bright things, always have."
The iconic Aussie frock designer has a new project: she's designing dog coats made from upcycled rubbish and modelled by her three-year- old Airedale terrier, BooBoo.
Here's BooBoo. Credit:Jenny Bannister
"He's not one of those stuck up little dogs who generally wears a coat, but he puts up with it if we tell him he looks good," says Bannister, who earlier this year made the tree change from Melbourne to Byron Bay.
"BooBoo is a chick magnet. When we took him to the farmer's market, everyone wanted to know why he was wearing a HiViz coat made out of an old car windscreen protector." This natty silver jacket features punkish straps and a built-in spade.
Practical and sustainable - Kelpie-cross Jesse models Clark’s doggie workwear.Credit:Jenny Bannister.
"I've upcycled that scoop before, it was on my hat for a Eurovision party, so now it's double-upcycled," says Bannister. "I thought, we'll hook on a shovel because those HiViz blokes have shovels, they lean on them. I turned it into a shit shovel because you have to pick up your dog poo – so it's a further statement on picking up your rubbish."
Bannister closed her eponymous womenswear label in 2009 after more than 30 years in business. She says it was no longer cost effective to manufacture locally. It sounds like she was sick of the ever growing mountain of stuff society is drowning in, too. "There has to be a reason to make something, you don't just do it for the hell of it," she says.
The dog coats are perfectly reasonable (even the one that's been made to look like a ute, built from a discarded wetsuit with tin can lids for headlights) – by "hijacking your trash," as Bannister puts it, they make a political as well as a style statement. "It's criminal what we throw away." Anyway, she's not selling them – these samples promote D.I.Y.
If you happen to be near the New South Wales Riverina town of Ardlethan next week (or, fancy a drive? It's about an hour north-west of Wagga Wagga), Bannister and her friend Dianne Clark will be running two Upcycle Dog Fashion Workshops on September 15th and 16th.
Bannister wearing one of her Punk Tea towel dresses.Credit:Graham Denholm
They'll be supplying students with a list of ideal materials in advance, things like "those plastic sacks you buy dog biscuits in; they're great," says Bannister, "and old belt buckles, blankets, bits of leather".
The project supports the Don't Rubbish the Riverina campaign while spreading the remake, repurpose, reuse message. "The idea is to raise awareness of over-consumption but it a fun way," says Clark, who fashioned this utilitarian-chic "Nuts and Bolts" coat for a Kelpie out of some blue work overalls that had seen better days.
Jenny Bannister's recycled jungle greens outfit, 1975. Credit:National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
Clark is another ex-Melbournian fashion designer; her Ellin Ambe label was worn by the likes of Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell. Clark grew up in Ardlethan, where there's an old tin mine that's currently being considered as a major new landfill site.
"This is kelpie country," she says, "at the foot of the Bygoo Hills and circled prettily by Mirrool Creek which feeds the Murrumbidgee Irrigation area." Clark is one of many locals worried about the possible environmental impacts of installing a giant garbage dump on the top of the hill above farm land.
As Peter Francis, a director of Australian Tin, explained to the ABC, "there's a looming severe shortage of landfill capacity in Sydney," so his company hopes to send "about 200,000 tonnes per year" out by rail to bury in Ardlethan.
According to Cleanup Australia, the average Aussie family generates enough garbage each year to fill a three-bedroom house. We are overwhelmingly reliant on landfill to dispose of it. There, some of it breaks down to produce massive amounts of methane which adds to global warming; some of it stubbornly refuses to decompose. Who wants to live next to that?
If, as Clark argues, "the Not In My Back Yard garbage policy is no policy at all", then we need to find ways of diverting our junk from landfill before it goes in the bin.
Bannister has been a waste-not- want-not crusader since the start of her career, before "upcycling" was even a word. Her first fashion job in 1975 was for store called Blues Point on Melbourne's Chapel Street that used old denim to make new gear. "They called me the Doctor of Denim," she laughs. "I'd cut the legs off old jeans with a big bandsaw, cut them open, spread them out, put a new pattern on top."
Bannister sourced materials to start her own label from a rag merchant – old jumpers that she cut into bits then sewed into wonderful patchwork garments. She made outfits out of old army uniforms, too.
What Bannister was doing back then was part punk, part art school creativity, borne out of necessity and cool rather than eco sensibilities, but I think it's fair to call her a sustainable fashion pioneer.
In fact, the history of Australian fashion and textiles is full of recycling, upcycling and repurposing stories. In the first half of the 20th century, "Wagga quilts" or "bush rugs" were commonly made from tailor's scraps and unwanted suiting wool samples.
Bannister was taught to sew at school. "Living in the country we couldn't just hop on a tram to get fabric from Myer," she says, "so we'd do the op shops. My grandmother didn't even have those – she was a soldier settler's wife, and when they arrived they lived in a humpy on the river bank down past Mildura. They had no money for clothes so she would cut up worn-out dresses and shirts to make new ones."
The last couple of decades have been about extraordinary abundance in the so-called Western world. Want a new outfit (for you or your dog)? Too easy. Just nip to the mall.
But as resources become scarcer and therefore more precious, innovators may well look back to trash. They could do worse than take notes from Bannister and Clark, and help us out of this landfill hole while they're at it.
Clare Press is a slow fashionista, and the author of Wardrobe Crisis, How We Went From Sunday Best to Fast Fashion. Follow Clare on Instagram and Twitter @mrspress
Clare Press is a slow fashionista, and the author of 'Wardrobe Crisis, How We Went From Sunday Best to Fast Fashion'.