Trash Fashion Bash | Where politics and fashion (wink, wink) meet

Even in the world of trash-turned-couture, not all garbage is runway worthy. Out: Cork. In: Plastic bags.

Cork had its day with designers for the nonprofit Haute Trash, but ask co-founder and designer Robin Worley about it, and you'll get pooh-poohed. "It sort of seemed like we've done cork," Worley said. "Now we have a lot to say about plastic bags."

Many of those plastic opinions will be parading down a runway at the Seattle Art Museum Saturday as part of "The Trash Fashion Bash & Holiday Explosion." Haute Trash, which specializes in turning blown-out tires, abandoned river rafts and Vietnamese pig food bags into clothing as political statement, is contributing its tongue-in-cheek voice for the second year in a row to the fundraiser for the International Sustainability Institute, a nonprofit encouraging environmental sustainability.

Local civic leaders will be strutting around in outfits made of crocheted plastic bags, a bowling shirt made from a Vietnamese pig feed bag and a plastic tablecloth and jacket featuring fowl from a game bird feed bag as part of the demonstration of the holiday season's glut.

Household waste increases more than 25 percent from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day, with enough ribbon tossed to tie a bow around the Earth, said event planner Jina Bonime. Plastic water bottles are particularly bad, with the amount of energy required to manufacture them and then transport them with water, she said.

California-based Haute Trash, a network of designers, contributed more than half of the 40 or so outfits that will be worn by leaders, including King County Councilmember Kathy Lambert and Seattle's Director of Transportation Grace Crunican.

But some people took their fashion fate into their own hands for the fete.

Bill Gaylord, a principal at GGLO, a Seattle-based integrated design firm, worked with GGLO associate Jennifer Stormont for his outfit, dubbed the "Ghost of Christmas Past and Future." That would be the ghost who didn't recycle and the ghost who will. Scrooge, are you listening?

Gaylord's eye-popping pants are a rainbow of used ribbon sewn together with silvery Mylar. Stormont knitted together wires from old Christmas lights for a sleeveless sweater and a turtleneck with flashing lights. They glued used batteries to a pool cue for a walking cane and included plastic disposable water bottles as the base for the fez-shaped headdress adorned with salt and pepper shakers. Materials came from their garage and what they could scrounge up from businesses and friends.

"This is a really fun way to make people think but also get creative with materials that would be thrown out normally," Gaylord said.

Some ideas, such as a messenger bag constructed of water bottles or a headdress supporting old gadgets including cameras, were tested and abandoned along the way.

"Once you start brainstorming ideas, it gets infectious," Gaylord said. "It's fun, and you're doing it for a good cause to enlighten people on the day-to-day decisions that they make. It's all about changing people's behavior."

But one lucky lady who stuck with the inspired minds at Haute Trash will be sauntering around in a halter top made from woven aluminum pop-tops with a Mylar skirt, while another will be sassing the crowd with a dress made from chicken wire adorned with prim plastic roses.

Haute Trash also recycles its own work (applause), and even the feed-bag fashions, making their debut here, can be transformed into nonholiday statements for future shows. The poultry bag pilgrim concoction easily becomes a statement about eating locally, Worley said.

"We have a lot of fun, but this is really why we do it — we really want to initiate social change."

Nicole Tsong: 206-464-2150 or ntsong@seattletimes.com