Kristen P Ahern
Conscious Costume
Chicago, Illinois, United States · Pittsburgh
1240 N Homan Ave, Suite 3C-2
Conscious Costume strives to make costume art more affordable, accessible, and sustainable. We offer creative reuse services in Chicago and Pittsburgh collecting, repairing, and redistributing costumes and materials.
- Methods/Processes
- Methods/Processes:
- Sourcing model
- Services Offered
- Scale
- 2–5 people
About the practice
Many costume artists that I talk to have a similar story to mine: ever since my first exposure to a costume shop environment in undergrad, I remember seeing piles and piles of fabric scraps in the trash and it broke my heart to see clean fabric scraps go into a trashcan and get destroyed by the remainder of someone's ramen noodles. I questioned how to improve the waste problem in a costume shop. However, I wasn’t seeing the full picture. I soon learned that in order to be truly ethical, I needed to radically reimagine my artistic supply chain. We, as a feminized art form, can and should strive to support and empower the feminized labor in the global textile and fashion industry through ethical choices and circular thinking. We now offer sustainable costume rentals and recycling services in Chicago and Pittsburgh, an online artist-to-artist marketplace, as well as a reference library for costume artists all around the world.
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