By Samantha Hayes
It's fashion week in Dunedin, and designers are putting the finishing touches on their collections for the Emerging Designer Awards and the Railway Station runway shows.
3 News caught up with two young designers who are recycling second hand clothes, and even rubbish, for their big ticket items.
Emerging designer Melanie Child is no cheapskate - she just likes making garments out of op shop items and stuff she finds on the street, like a dress decorated with beer can tear tabs, for example.
"The beer tabs were sourced around the streets of Dunedin from eager friends," she says, "and thanks to the students who left them on the footpath for me."
Recycling items is a strong trend according to Margo Barton, a lecturer at the Otago School of Fashion for more than 15 years. But she says it doesn't make the clothes any cheaper, and consumers need to be prepared to pay for sustainable fashion like this.
In her ideal world, "designers would design less things but design them with more thought. Consumers would wear them for longer and glitz them up with accessories."
Six years at NOM*d taught Sara Aspinall to "up-cycle". She buys old leather jackets and makes them into bags.
"I have actually got stuff at the tip before, and you can reuse them and give them another function and they are cool again I suppose. and they get a whole new life."
The bags sell for between $300 and $700, but do the second hand goods deserve the designer price tags?
"Definitely," says Barton. "There's design input there."
Come Friday, the stage will be set for new and recycled goods alike at the Dunedin Railway Station - one of the world's longest catwalks. At 116m by the end of the show, the models will have walked 1.5km in six-inch stilettos.
3 News