Every week millions of pairs of ladies tights are consigned to the bottom drawer or the bin.  

 

A large number contain nylon, a non-biodegradable material that often ends up in landfill or incinerated. Re-imagining Ladies Tights has been raising awareness of how these seemingly innocuous garments generate huge waste that often ends up being buried beneath the earth.  

 

This powerful project uses the most innocuous, gentle and prettiest of clothing items, tights and stockings, to encourage people to reconsider waste and recycling.  Using techniques borrowed from advertising, this bright, fun, humorous endeavour draws in audiences to happily engage before exposing how easy it is to fool into thinking that the small things don’t matter, making little impression on the planet’s environment.  

 

Creating a giant Tights Ball from broken nylon hosiery donated by women of London as a representation of Mother Earth, the project explores the politics of ladies tights and reveals through live performance interventions and gathering of personal stories how hosiery is viewed, regarded, consumed, disposed of and recycled.  The aspiration is to place The Tights Ball on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square containing thousands of tights and stories provided by women of the city and to be a symbolic reminder of our consumption habits and the consequences. 

 

Partners have included; The Royal Central School of Speech & Drama's MA Music Theatre, London borough of Camden, London borough of Lewisham, Veolia Environmental Services, AgeUK and Arts Council England.  A number of live performances & interventions have taken place throughout Camden (2014) and Lewisham (2013).

 

You can donate broken nylon tights, stockings, fishnets and pop socks to this ongoing project by contacting us here or visiting one of our donation points.

 

If you would like one of our recycle bins please email us at: projects@platform-7.com