Laurie Halse Anderson Quotes

I am not a designer that buys vintage to be inspired.

I'm in the middle of my own 'Project Runway' challenge given to me by my daughter's preschool. All the parents have to make an outfit for their kids, for school pictures, made entirely out of recycled objects. I can not believe I have homework.

One of my assistants found this old German machine. It was originally used to make underwear. Like Chanel, who started with underwear fabric - jerseys - we used the machine that made underwear to make something else.

I have to make a dress out of recycled materials for my kid's preschool 'Project Runway'-like assignment. I'm currently fusing plastic bags.

Tile is going to the landfill by the metric ton. All we have to do it gather it up, glue it down to the floor and grout it. Then you have a tile floor, and not just any tile floor: it's a mosaic of your own choosing.

Growing up I always used to shop in Oxfam. I'd find things for 50p and then take them home, cut them up and make them into something new.

Of course there are many ways we can reuse something. We can dye it. We can cut it. We can change the buttons. Those are other ways to make it alive. But this is a new step to use anything - hats, socks, shirts. It's the first step in the process.

I know quite a few eco designers who build dresses out of old couture gowns. They disassemble, 'upcycle,' and reuse them in extraordinary ways. To me, that's a sustainable way of doing things.

If I'm going to try and find something, I stick to the flea markets, or I pull hand-me-downs from my family because I like pieces to have stories.

Films go into vaults, art into museums, and music into halls of fame. Most fashion is worn for a few seasons and off-loaded into the recycling bin or, worse, some landfill.

If I have an hour in a city, I go to vintage stores first because it's so much cooler to find a piece that is unique. I love the thought of some girl having worn it before and living her life in it.

A friend of mine has a big farm in the desert, and she picks up feathers and roadkill for me, then makes it into clothes. I think it's cool to wear roadkill. If I died and somebody wanted to wear my teeth around their neck to VMAs, I'd feel honored.

The funny thing about being creative is that, especially high school people, I kept noticing I'd always go to these certain materials. I'd always be picking up trash and picking up paper and using it.

My go-to jeans are old Levi's I've gotten from boyfriends; they're worn-in and really yummy and perfect.

Buy less. Choose well. Make it last. Quality, not quantity. Everybody's buying far too many clothes.

Even though it was the 70s, we found old stocks of clothes that had never been worn from the 50s and took them apart. I started to teach myself how to make clothes from that kind of formula.

I bargain-shop all the time, but then I started learning about how those products are made and about how if you spend a little bit more money on ethical clothing that are using recycled materials - like, my favorite dresses are by Christy Dawn... the carbon footprint that they're leaving is so minimal, and it's really worth the extra money.

Clothing isn't disposable.

I really love secondhand clothes. It's fun to turn them into something new.

Our house was cluttered with little charms, thoughtfully placed. There were all kinds of little things going on. Like, my mom made a lampshade out of a picture of our family, but if you look closely, there's a baby Jesus that she cut up and put just above all of us.

The fashion business has to change. There's too much waste.

I'm really into the recycling of art. That one piece of art inspires another piece of art, which inspires another piece of art. I really like that idea.

I use all sorts of things to work with: old brooms, old sweaters, and all kinds of peculiar tools and materials... I paint to excite myself, and make something for myself.

I've always been so interested in personal history. I'm very fascinated by my parents' and my grandparents' generations. I seem to think that they had a resilience and an integrity that may be somewhat deficient in my own generation, and in subsequent generations as well, because America has been rather easy to live in since the Depression.

I might be collecting wheely bins in 12 months time but at least they'll be wheely bins outside back gates that I know, in a part of the country that I love. There's no place like home!