Festival show stitches a solution to fashion wasteland

That textile waste poses an ever-growing environmental problem, particularly with the popularity of fast fashion, but one group of artists hopes to inspire change.

Melbourne-based art collective Fast Fashun is in Sydney for the first time to run its flagship House of Fast Fashun event, a runway show in which festival-goers can flaunt DIY outfits made from recycled clothes.

The collective is providing 750kg of clothing courtesy of Vinnies for participants to cut and stitch, along with sewing machines.

The artists will be on hand for the Sydney Festival event to help people with little experience in textiles, but they also encourage newcomers not to be shy with the clips and bobby pins.

The centrepiece of the event is its titular house, a small timber structure layered with 250kg of recycled fabric.

The clothes available to participants will be piled around the house to represent how many textiles end up in landfill.

Fast Fashun member Teneille Clerke, also known as Tenfingerz, hopes the event inspires Sydneysiders to think more about where their old clothes go when they throw them away.

"It's a really great way of giving people a bit of an understanding ... worldwide, it's like a garbage truck every minute of clothing waste," she told AAP.

"It just seems insurmountable and intangible ... but then when you come and you see, oh, that's actually a lot."

Clerke sees fashion as an important sustainability issue and encourages participants to find their own style rather than following what is popular.

"We're trying to democratise fashion, as well as talk about climate action and sustainability and ethics in labour, and dumping fashion waste on the global south.

"We also want to just encourage creativity and self expression."

Vinnies product stewardship manager Anuja Mukim will also be at the event to inform guests about the best ways to donate their old clothes.

She grew up in India and has seen first-hand the effects of the fashion industry on the region.

"The neighbourhoods which had these factories, you could see the conditions ... the drains would have threads in them, there'd be threads hanging out of everywhere," Ms Mukim said.

House of Fast Fashun is being held at Tumbalong Park in Darling Harbour on Saturday and Sunday.

Australian Associated Press