As the students had it in their project presentation: “In the end of the day it is all a cycle, or at least it should all be a cycle. Nature without human influence, a cycle. Like a plant producing seeds, which than grows into a plant again and this produces seeds again and another plant. As designers and artists we see our task in enriching this cycle and its beauty.

For this competition, our idea was to show the beautiful cycle the Manteco® company is working with. We appreciate this cycle and think it is far too less visible in our today’s world. Everyone sees a finished sewn garment hanging on the rags, but no one appreciates where it is actually coming from, and where it is going.

There should be a circular economy, another way of staying in the cycle. We see that Manteco is driven by this idea, and thought this thinking process of circular we want to appreciate and we want to value. Our garment is based on the circle. The starting point are vintage garments, since there are tones and tones of vintage garments available. Those garments are shredered, picked apart and ordered. The wool can be died and than spun and woven. It gives a new fabric. All those steps we tried to underline with colours, it starts in a dirty washed green and ends up in a poppy and catching green. This green is life donating and hopeful, it is energetic and natural at the same time. In the backpack out of vintage garments, we tried to keep all the leftovers we were using.

We tried to make this cycle as visible as we can. That this idea of a fully finished garment gets smaller and smaller. We tried to combine both something interesting for the eye and something sculptural and artistic, transmitting our message.

As the students have it: “Our concept started off as word play on the original brief given to us by Manteco®. We merged all of our respective points of views as designers and quickly realised that we could expand on this word play by using the term no waste to mean no waist, aka ‘size-less’ and having multiple waistlines. Our inspirations came from workwear in factories and using every piece of the fabric, including the off cuts, so the entire pattern is made from one piece, and the details from the offcuts – therefore no waste. By constructing with unusual waistlines and straight lines on for our pattern, the piece does not derive from any gender and therefore remains androgynous.