Sage Szkabarnicki-Stuart, Ovis aries, 2020
Wearing clothes is a uniquely human behavior. Scientists believe that we started wearing clothes somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000 years ago. Even before humans learned to spin and weave fibers into cloth, they were tanning animal skins and converting plant and animal materials, like wool, into felt.
Today a large proportion of textiles are made from plastics like polyester. These materials are cheap and efficient to produce but can take up to 200 years to decompose. Clothing made from plastics has become very popular in North America with the rise of fast fashion: ‘fast fashion’ retailers sell a continuously updated roster of inexpensive clothing that are up to date with the latest fashion trends. This means that older clothing that has gone ever so quickly out of style tends to find its way into landfills where it remains for hundreds of years.