Jerome Cheung
Floss Face
Class of: 2024
Major: Fashion Design BFA
Medium: An assortment of accessories (a pair of earrings, a face mask, and a necklace).
Faculty: Eva Perez de Vega
Prompt: Researching an everyday material and using it to create something wearable. Through the project, we explore the climate crisis and how our everyday items affect our changing climate while using these materials to design with the human senses in mind.
Plastic waste is an increasingly urgent issue, as it affects the livelihoods of both humans and animals. This collection of accessories discusses how our current production systems are unsustainable and unhealthy as toxic waste is released in every step of the life cycle of singleuse plastic items, while also revolving around a cradle-to-grave format, such that the extraction of raw materials and contributions to landfill never end. In my collection, floss picks are used to discuss this issue as floss picks are single-use, mass-produced plastic items that take decades to decompose. Floss picks are also very sharp on one end. When the mask is worn on the face, the pointy ends of the floss picks occasionally poke your skin and it does not feel good. Through this, I aim to show that these unsustainable, single-use plastic items will ultimately hurt us. I shot this video of myself wearing the collection in front of a lush forest with melodious bird sounds in the background as I believe, looking forward, we should redirect our production systems to more sustainable, nature-oriented systems that can benefit both humans and nature so that we live in mutual symbiosis.
