From Trash to Fashion: Understanding Wearable Art as Environmental Activism

This paper employs critical discourse analysis and environmental communication theories to exam-ine how wearable art projects like Trashion Fashion and Wan Yunfeng’s plastic couture function as forms of material rhetoric and ecological activism. Drawing on theories of object-oriented ontology (Harman, 2018), waste studies (Hawkins, 2006), and visual rhetoric (Finnegan, 2001), we argue that these interventions per-form three crucial functions: They materialize the abstract concept of waste pollution; Creating affective en-counters that disrupt consumption habits; Reconfiguring human-waste relationships through aesthetic transfor-mation. Our analysis reveals how these projects operate within what Bennett (2010) calls “vibrant matter” to challenge neoliberal waste regimes while offering new paradigms for sustainable engagement.