The Need for Multifunctional Clothing
Women move constantly between roles. Professional, social, domestic, athletic — often switching clothes multiple times a day to meet the expectations of each setting. Constant code switching is inefficient and costly. Women are financially burdened to maintain a large wardrobe to match these needs. As a result, women spend significant time and energy on packing, laundry, and dry cleaning, just to meet a basic standard of appropriateness in each setting. Clothing today is rarely designed to accommodate a life in which a woman plays many roles; instead, women are expected to adapt their lives to their wardrobes.

We Waste Valuable Materials
At the same time, the fashion industry continues to overproduce and under-recycle. Materials marketed as recyclable are often sent straight to landfills. Items built for single use often have characteristics that support reuse, but the system disposes of them prematurely. A circular economy model resists this pattern by keeping materials in circulation. Exploring new applications for discarded textiles and creatively reworking them uncovers potential that the industry routinely overlooks.

Questioning Amazon “Reuse”
I began to wonder where Amazon bags really went after people dropped them off for recycling. I went to Amazon pickup stations around New York City to learn. Employees informed me they go straight to the landfill despite Amazon’s claims of recycling. For three months I kept my bags and collected from friends, questioning how they might be transformed. Cutting them into strips, weaving them into a textile, and experimenting with durability and form, I began designing a multifunctional coat to keep this material in circulation.

An Idea
In the coat, Amazon bags are transformed into a woven textile that plaits the logo into a new pattern. The bags are given a second life as a fine, flexible fabric. The finished coat is waterproof, insulative, and lightweight, offering functionality comparable to technical outerwear while challenging ideas of disposability. My intention is both to demonstrate how single-use waste can be reimagined into multifunctional products that meet practical needs, and to encourage critical critique of systems of overconsumption.