FRAGMENTS IN FLIGHT
This patchwork cycling jersey is constructed from Lycra scraps salvaged from my classmates’ knit dress projects, with panels joined using water-soluble thread. Only the zipper and collar ribbing were sourced outside the classroom. By design, the garment is temporary: as the wearer sweats or rides through rain, the seams begin to dissolve, causing the scraps to fall away.
The piece confronts the contradictions of the athletic industry, one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of fashion, built on Lycra — a petroleum-based fiber that is non-recyclable and takes 20 to 200 years to decompose. Rather than disguising this unsustainable reality, the jersey embodies it. As the patchwork disintegrates, it stages the inevitable fate of athletic wear, reminding us that these plastics will ultimately return to the ground, persisting long after the body has moved on.
This garment is conceived as a performance piece, making visible the cycle of production, waste, and denial within fashion, and forcing us to acknowledge the disposability embedded in what we consider everyday wear.
An example of what happens to water solluble thread when water interacts.