Hong Kong domestic helper’s upcycled fashion collection combines empowerment and empathy
Using the city’s streets as a catwalk, domestic helpers step out in Sustainable Sunday Couture created from everyday items, including coffee sachets, chocolate wrappers and shoelaces
It’s a Sunday (February 25), the first warm day of spring, and a fashion show is taking place in Central. Anyone who has passed through those streets on what is supposed to be the domestic helpers’ day of rest will be familiar with their ceaseless motion: a dancing, clapping, singing, often bewildering blur. Such is the constant competition for eye (and ear) that getting any message across requires a degree of innovation.
With that in mind, the organisers of Sustainable Sunday Couture – an exhibition of gowns created from recycled material now on display at the Philippine consulate, in Admiralty – have decided to use the city as a promotional catwalk.
Dr Julie Ham, the project coordinator and an assistant professor at the Department of Sociology of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), and Dr Chen Ju-chen, an anthropology lecturer (specialising in Filipino beauty pageants) at Chinese University, have gathered together a group of volunteer models, make-up artists, dressers and photographers. The starting point for the endeavour lies in the shadow of Jardine House, in Central – or, to be precise, in an area near the Starbucks at Jardine House where Elpie Malicsi, 60, has her outdoor workshop.
Malicsi is the domestic helper who designed the 15 outfits destined to be on show at the consulate. In the time-honoured tradition of couturiers worldwide, she can be seen adjusting her creations before the models walk: the tweak of a sachet here (one garment consists of 310 coffee sachets and 36 chocolate wrappers stitched together), the twitch of a bin liner there (the wedding gown, with rustling train, is a confection of white plastic rubbish bags). Every now and then, exhausted but exuberant, she tells anyone within earshot how happy she is.
I want people who come to think in different ways about sustainability. It’s all good and fine to talk about it, but it’s the domestic workers who have the burden of sorting, cleaning, recycling. They’re the stakeholders. And the angle of eco-fashion is a way to recognise their culture and creativity
Four of her six models are domestic helpers, of whom two, Lanie Rosario and Zyreen Sevilla, are stalwarts of the Filipino beauty-pageant world here. “They are the queens, top models of my shows,” proclaims Bryan Decepeda, who as a pageant organiser and make-up artist, and himself a domestic helper, is familiar with the scene.
