Critical Fashion Practice: Transforming Difficult-To-Recycle Metal Waste from Post-Recovery Workwear into Modular Jewellery to Reveal the Unseen Complexities of Apparel Recycling

Abstract

This research investigates how modular jewellery design can function as a form of critical fashion practice to address the overlooked complexities of apparel recycling, with a particular focus on the reuse of post-recovery hardware waste from industrial workwear. By transforming discarded components such as zippers, snap fasteners, and metal fittings into adaptable, customisable jewellery, the project proposes an alternative to conventional fashion consumption—one that fosters emotional durability, user engagement, and reduced material extraction.

Developed through a hybrid methodology that combines practice-led and practice-based approaches, the project draws on waste-led design, circular economy principles, and up-cycling as both critical and speculative practice. Collaborating with local textile recycler ImpacTex for material sourcing, the work grapples with the challenges of repurposing hard-to-recycle waste while exploring modularity as an ethical framework for design longevity. Jewellery, with its capacity for personal attachment and embodied storytelling, becomes a vehicle for environmental critique—revealing the embedded histories of industrial materials and disrupting the invisibility of waste. Positioned at the intersection of design activism, critical fashion, and reflective practice, this project contributes to the discourse on sustainable design by demonstrating how artefacts can operate as communicative agents, provoking reflection and encouraging behavioural shifts in both the consumer and within broader fashion systems.