Born in the Dominican Republic, in a family of tailors, and raised between New York City and Boston from the age of eight, Edgar Alejandro Garrido got to see both sides of the fashion industry; first, the factories that produce the clothes and then the H&Ms of this world stacking up mass quantities thanks to the cheap labour. Seeing this, Edgar started experimenting with excess clothing in his late teenage years, making garments out of what had already been made instead of buying new fabrics.
While Edgar’s work was led by sustainability concerns, he admits that it was also a matter of cost. “I’d shop in thrift and dollar stores in hopes to find anything that could potentially be repurposed into new clothes, from a random tourist or promo T-shirts from some years ago to curtains and laundry bags,” he explains.