The Materials and The People / Tag Shirt

Considering the complex and problematic industry of fast fashion, I slowly constructed this garment entirely out of clothing labels and care tags: a shirt made out of the only thing that is not a shirt about a shirt. By exposing the hidden and often annoying tags, this piece forefronts the histories and lineages of materials and people who lend themselves (willingly and unwillingly) to the industry of clothing. Here, I am also considering how tags act as orienting anchors, both for the act of slipping on a shirt the right way, and for understanding how to care for the garment. When I removed the tags from other garments, they became strangely anonymous and unmoored. When I made this garment out of these signals of identity of other clothes, this new piece also became anonymous; this shirt is a collection of identifying information that itself does not have.