“The U.S. throws out over 11 millions tons of clothing every year,” says Elise McMahon, MFA Industrial Design ’20. “Typically, an American wears a garment for two years, then discards it through donation. Too often, it ends up in landfills, whether locally
or abroad.”
While McMahon’s Parsons thesis focused on designing with waste streams, her interest in what she calls “the American landscape of waste” began many years before. Since 2012, McMahon has operated the design studio LikeMindedObjects to create furniture
and interiors from found materials. She became increasingly alarmed at how fast fashion affects the rest of the world and wondered what an American designer could do locally to divest from these unsustainable systems. When she learned (from the OR
Foundation) that 15 million discarded t-shirts are sent monthly to Ghana—the world’s largest second-hand clothing market—the alarming statistic set wheels in motion.
McMahon’s chair for LikeMindedObjects made from discarded t-shirts.McMahon began sourcing 100-pound bales of discarded t-shirts and brainstorming with weaver and designer Francesca Capone on how to reuse this material. Because t-shirts are knit on the round, Capone discovered the garments could be cut into looped strips
and woven into fabric using a traditional potholder loom weaving method. The collaborators began experimenting and developing products.
When McMahon arrived at Parsons, she’d been running LikeMindedObjects for seven years. “The approach to industrial design thinking at Parsons helped me imagine the potential impact of doing positive production at scale,” she says. Her education expanded
her knowledge of sustainable materials, the circular economy and the importance of storytelling.
Today, from its Web store, LikeMindedObjects offers upcycled clothing, while sister company CRCL.EARTH offers pillow inserts and cushions using shredded recycled denim in place of petroleum-based stuffing. A T-shirt Waste Loom
and Edu Kit enables people to weave their own creations. As McMahon says, “We don’t need to solve everything as individuals. We can choose one seemingly small, particular problem and chip away at it.”
Learn more at www.likemindedobjects.com