
The world’s largest global fashion activism movement debuts in Malaysia with a week of eye-opening events, from clothes swaps to T-shirt weaving workshops and a textile waste installation.
To raise awareness regarding fashion waste, Dhan Illiani Yusof has created an installation piece entitled “The Big Waste” which is inspired by the Dung Beetle and the Big Bang accompanied by a large pile of clothes resembling a landfill using the massive pile of clothes from the recycling company Kloth, where it has prepared bins in specific locations around Kuala Lumpur (KL).
It plays with the idea of “origin” in a “universal” multi-layered lens, to highlight and question society’s roles in waste and consumption.
The installation makes us look at the current problematic approach in understanding the economic “growth "and layers of the how, where and who are the makers behind our fabric and clothing.
“For the installation, Fashion Revolution wanted something that had an impact on people so what better to do that than a landfill itself, because that is the most visually impacting image that we can think of when it comes to textile waste, which has to in the mountainous volumes of clothing just just discarded in like natural landscapes.
“From my perspective, I also wanted to add an element of how we needed to start questioning, what are we buying, what are we spending on what’s in our clothes as well, so that we can have a more universal view of how textile is not just specific to everyday wear, but also in terms of the value of our producers,” Dhan explained.
“The fabric on desert balls and the other planets are all from my fabric collection of waste from my fashion college days and the bars themselves are actually from my friends.”
One of the main factors why people buy a lot of clothes is due to their lifestyle, occupation as well as keeping up with the latest demands.
Those who work in entertainment, fashion and the corporate world are required to dress more presentable, so they are more likely to discard more clothes.
“It just needs to go deeper and deeper into the grassroots and give people the opportunity to make that action easier,” she concluded.
“The Big Waste ” was a part of Fashion Revolution Week which was held from April 19 to 24 at REXKL, KL.


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