Few designers would ever go digging through the garbage for fabric, but the trash is where Catherine Charlot sources most of her textiles.
She's not even mining for silk dupioni or discarded cashmere. Nope - just polyester.
Passersby don't understand.
"One day I was digging...[through]a garbage can. This woman said, 'Oh my god, you look so nicely dressed, what are you doing in there? Are you hungry? I can offer you some food.'"
Charlot, founder of the Brooklyn label HIMANE, turned down the woman's offer. She does quite well for herself, designing custom-fit dresses, coats and bags, some of which sell for several hundreds of dollars. The principal material she uses in her studio are umbrellas.
While blustery weather can ravage umbrella frames, rendering them useless to their owners, such days are a blessing for Charlot, who scavenges for umbrella carcasses after storms. She's one of a growing number of designers participating in the green design movement who have upcycled umbrellas into chic clothing and accessories.
At HIMANE, knockoff Burberry-print umbrellas are torn apart, paired with dark wash denim and reassembled into expertly-tailored jackets. Dime-a-dozen black polyester umbrellas from flea markets are converted into weekender totes.
"The concept is about the finish and how you're going to do sit down and work with it and make it look like a $1,000 dress," she says.
As far as ethical fabrics go, Charlot prefers umbrellas to organic textiles.
"Some of the costs of it - they're exorbitant!" she says. "You will kill the entire purpose of what I'm doing."
Cecilia Felli, an industrial designer based in Busto Arsizio, Italy, a town just north of Milan, saw discarded umbrellas in a new way by studying their form.
"I looked at it, moving it, it was very near to the shape of a skirt," she explains.
Like Charlot, she hits the streets post-rainfall to find materials for her sewing projects.
"I prefer not to trash anything," she says. "I wanted to keep it because I think they can have another life."
She's designed dozens of bold, flowy skirts, which she sells online and in Milanese markets. Some are dotted with delicate floral prints, others scream with punchy, multi-coloured panels. She leaves parts of the umbrella's skeleton attached to her skirts, to emphasize the natural canopy shape.
And while most designers who use umbrellas create garments for women, Philadelphian Taryn Zychal had a different muse: her three pugs.
Through her Etsy shop Recycling Zychal, she sells custom-made dog jackets, which are a hit with customers in the U.S. and Canada.