Business Opportunities Weblog

One Woman’s Trash Is Another Woman’s…Lingerie?

By on January 6, 2009 in Ideas


The Wall Street Journal:

Even though gift-giving was relatively stingy this Christmas season, enough stuff changed hands to generate plenty of leftover trash. And that means good tidings for the artists who transform cast-offs into commodities.

Curbsides and trash bins are suddenly overflowing with bags, boxes and other booty that will become the raw material for creations ranging from candle holders to jewelry to undergarments.

Artist Kat Cole scours one of Pittsburgh’s busiest thoroughfares, Liberty Avenue, for bits of steel, wire and bolts that have fallen off the streams of rumbling trucks and cars in and out of downtown. She was busy last month making Christmas gifts from cans discarded on the roadside; one woman wanted three handmade broaches.

Cole, 23, said she used to make jewelry from metals such as copper and silver, too, but scrap prices rose too high this past year. So, she switched to the free stuff that had been thrown off cars and trucks along Liberty Avenue and other streets. “It has been good for my work and my pocketbook,” she said.

Ingrid Goldbloom Bloch, an artist in Massachusetts, looks for Coke cans and washing-machine-hose clamps, weaving pieces into garters. The red and silver garter is one of 13 items in her line of trashy lingerie, which also employs old dryer vents and, in her homage to the Wonderbra, welded steel.

Photo by Dean Powell.

bootstrap creativity eco-friendly

Rich Whittle has added 6,226 posts to Business Opportunities Weblog.

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  • http://lotusjump.com/seo-software.php SEO Software

    does this remind anyone else of Zoolander?

  • cassy

    wow! what a good idea from trash she made it into a womens lingerie,it is really cool and new fashion trend,congrats ingerd for your new invention!

  • Jaclyn

    That is a cool idea. but in the back of my mind i keep wondering how comfortable that metal tab can bra would be? but it is cool to see it made out of tab cans, as i thought my mother was the only person left on this planet who drank tab. :) and also…i’m really hoping that she fully disinfects this stuff before she make’s it into whatever she make’s it into and sends people out wearing it.

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