Disgusted by waste thrown away in the capital’s rivers, fashion designers and models have used the catwalk in Cambodia this week to combat pollution in lakes and celebrate the arts and creativity.

The Fashion Show, held on Saturday during international Earth Day at Factory Phnom Penh, aimed to raise environmental awareness among young Cambodians and connect them to the decision-making process.

Robert Tizard, Project Lead of Wildlife Conservation Society’s "Our Tonle Sap" project, said the Earth Day Festival this year gave the opportunity to collaborate with fashion designers to create pieces inspired by rare birds and fishes found around the Tonle Sap Lake to raise awareness of these endangered species and climate change issues.

“The constant challenge with the river and the Tonle Sap [Lake] is people don’t have the system to manage their waste. Sometimes, they might burn waste, sometimes they might try to put waste in a few landfills or find places to bury the waste. So, waste gets thrown into the lake and ends up in the river,” Tizard told Kiripost.

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He added that textile waste can affect the water, animals and humans in the food chain. “About 20 percent of waste that comes from the river is textiles. So, a lot of textiles get thrown away or end up in the river, despite the fact that it can be reused or re-worn again,” he said.

The Tonle Sap is Cambodia’s most important wetland, with the Tonle Sap Biosphere Reserve sustaining more than 1.5 million people. It also supports at least 50 globally threatened species, including the critically endangered Bengal Florican and Southeast Asia’s largest waterbird colony in the flooded forest at Prek Toal.

The Earth Day Festival was in collaboration with Re-Made in Cambodia (RMIC), River Ocean Cleanup and Everwave ,under the theme of “Ushering in a New Wave of Sustainability”.

The event featured an array of educational workshops, exhibitions of local products and the work of other partners conducting work around the Tonle Sap. In the evening, an Upcycled Fashion Show took place with collections made from textiles collected from the rivers, all of which are designed by local fashion designers. Models also performed trapped in fishing nets to highlight the issue of discarded fishing nets in waters.

The Fashion Show aims to raise environmental awareness among young Cambodians and connect them to the decision-making process. Kiripost via Re-Made in Cambodia

Alyssa Kardos, founder of RMIC, said the purpose to use fashion for the Earth Day event celebration is to engage Cambodian youths, including promoting young Khmer designers and artists to access topics that are difficult to discuss, such as eco and climate anxiety, wildlife extinction, and river pollution through the art of fashion.

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“I hope that people walk away with interest in the topics and wanting to know more. I don’t want them to walk away and think, super-inform me about everything. I want everyone to walk away knowing one young Khmer designer’s name, and also thinking about the environment and looking on a bigger scale at issues in their community,” Alyssa told Kiripost.

The festival featured a raft of entertainments, spanning films, contemporary dance, poetry and rap. They all reflected on sustainability and environmental themes. The festival ended with an exciting Upcycle Fashion Show that showcased 95 outfits from 33 local designers, all of which were made from textiles collected from the confluence of Cambodian rivers, and are designed to be wearable, practical, and inclusive.

Alyssa hopes that this sustainable fashion show allows the opportunity for youth to use their creativity while raising public awareness about river pollution caused by fashion.

“After the event is over, it doesn’t stop there. We want to connect consumers in America and Germany with Cambodia to purchase the clothes that were made from this event,” she said, adding that at the end of the event an online auction of the clothes was held online.

Fashion show at Phnom Penh Factory, throwing spotlight on river pollution. Kiripost via Re-Made in Cambodia

There were 96 outfits of recycled clothes made from materials collected from the river in Phnom Penh areas. They were redesigned by 32 fashion designers.

The majority of the outfits were designed by young fashion design students from MaPa Fashion Design Academy, Limkokwing University and Raffles International College.

Leng Moysim, 19, is a female Year 3 fashion design student at Limkokwing University. She said the reason she decided to join sustainable fashion design is because she wants to be part of a solution in the fashion industry as she realizes it heavily pollutes the environment.

In December, six members from the same university applied as a team to work on this project and passed. Now they have been working on recycling and redesigning clothes that they collect from the river for about two months.

“We go to the Ocean River Clean-up (ORC) recycling place. We pick up fabrics with my team and there is a lot of garbage there,” Moysim told Kiripost. She added that she was shocked to see tons of clothes that have been thrown away in the river. Collecting these clothes also made her feel guilty about her previous habit of throwing unwanted clothes into the water.

“When I go there, it is eye opening because we never see the clothes that come from the river. Sometimes we just throw them away. For my clothes, I sometimes throw them away or offer them to someone, but when I see it, it reminds me where my clothes go and I regret throwing them away,” she said.

Moysim now prefers to buy second hand clothes from thrift stores and tries to renovate them with her own creative designs. In addition, she purchases clothes about three to four times a year, spending approximately between $100 and $200.

She added, “I think it wakes me up and I think our collections and our other designers' collections will teach people that all the clothes from the river are all not trash. We also can recycle and can rewear them.”

Fashion show at Phnom Penh Factory, throwing spotlight on river pollution. Kiripost via Re-Made in Cambodia

Mony Nuthdariya, 24, a college fashion design student from MaPa Fashion Design Academy, said she and another 15 classmates were impressed by the recycling fashion project that offered them the chance to express their fashion design styles using unwanted clothes from the river and give the clothes a new lease of life to be resold and worn again.

During the production process, a group of fashion design students from MaPa Fashion Design Academy went to Zero Waste Center at Chbar Ampov district to collect abandoned clothes collected from along the river that are stored there.

“It is really difficult since some fabrics were in the water for a long time so they were smelly and carried a lot of dirt. Therefore it demands us to wash and clean it multiple times before we could use it to design,” Nuthdariya said .

She spent about a week creating the new style of clothes using many complex varieties of fabrics in different conditions from the river clothes.

“We have to assemble these different fabrics and evaluate them whether their colors and patterns match from one to another well or not before we create a brand new outfit,” she added.

As a fashion design student, she thinks Cambodian fashion nowadays is developing, however, she believes Cambodian fashion design has more potential to grow and flourish, especially if more opportunities open up for fashion designers to showcase the art of fashion design more.

“I see most of the time, the clothes we wear are imported from abroad and if we want to wear branded clothes we have to buy them from other countries. So, if Cambodia is able to establish a huge brand of clothes like other countries it is such a good thing,” she added.

Nuthdariya said she loves to buy second hand clothes from thrift stores, especially at Boeng Keng Kang Market. In a year, she buys clothes several times, spending about $50 to $60.

She added, “Actually I cannot wear it all, but I still always love to buy it whenever I see unique styles of outfits.”

Fashion show at Phnom Penh Factory, throwing spotlight on river pollution. Kiripost/Iea Sonita

So far, the project has enabled the Tonle Sap’s community rangers and community-based organizations to conduct 3,674 patrols. This has helped protect 140,605 hectares of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems and 1,001 hectares are under the Sustainable Rice Platform practice.

In addition, 1,446 rangers have been trained in climate change-related subjects, especially climate smart adaptation. A total of $27,050 of the sub-national plans was also allocated to support environmental change-related activities of the project targeted community-based organizations.

meas.molika@kiripost.com