Top 100 - Collecting and Remaking 100 Shirts (2002 - ongoing)
Principal Investigator: Rebecca Earley
Funded by: Chelsea College of Art and Design

Top 100 is an ongoing project that intends to recycle 100 old shirts, re-issuing them in sets of 10 for public consumption through exhibitions. Each individual set of ten has been remade to a different brief, for a different exhibition or event. At the end of the project there will be 100 recycled shirts, ready to wear, each with their own story.
Environmentally speaking we need to reuse. Philosophically and spiritually, recycling makes us feel good. For clothing in particular it is an essential habit, as the fashion obsolescent fuelled industry creates a huge volume of material waste.

On the high street the quality and design aesthetic of recycled clothing is still low, and for a considerable portion of the high fashion conscious population it is still not a style option. This project intends to produce a range of garments that focuses on that market gap by producing capsule collections of garments for show and eventual sale.

The production technique for the shirts was initially developed from the heat photogram technique of printing (which used no water at any stage of production) which was then evolved into a production technique called ‘exhaust printing’. This meant that when a print was designed and put into production the same dyed paper or stencil was used over and over again until the printed image became too faint. This was inspired by the practice of ‘exhaust dyeing’ (where the same dye vat is used to dye fibres or fabrics until the water is clear).

Inspired by a collection of second hand polyester blouses collected from charity shops over several years, the project involved editing them into sets of ten, looking for continuity in style and shape, which would make these capsule collections aesthetically coherent.

The first collection was borne out of research work at the Eden Project in 2001. Inspired by the exotic plants, the first print collection was the ‘Palm Print’. The most recent collection in 2006 for the Well Fashioned exhibition reinvented the blouses of the late textile designer Christine Risley, using inspiration from the lovingly arranged collection of objects in Risley’s design studio.

Top 100 continues into 2007 with more redesigned recycled shirts using new technologies such as sonic welding, laser cutting and digital printing.