At first glance, the dress above looks like a gorgeous hand-made garment. And it is. But what you probably don’t realise is that its made of recycled packaging and edible plants!

Year 12 student Charlotte Ram found a unique way to recycle the wool packaging from My Food Bag using it as the basis of her Fabric Technology project. “I wanted to add edible plants to my garment because this creates a whole new purpose for clothes,” says Charlotte. “I always knew I loved plants because my room is covered in them and I have a big passion for the fashion industry, therefore by creating this garment I could bring two things that I love together. Now I can show people how to bring human society and nature closer together through fashion.”

Charlotte says the plant currently growing on her garment (pictured) is Red Clover microgreens. “They are an edible plant that just taste like baby sprouts. Different seeds can be germinated for different visual effects, creating an ever changing garment. I first grew mustard seeds on my garment, but did not leave enough time for them to sprout,” she says.

“The grey material is the My Food Bag 100% biodegradable and sustainable sheep wool. These come with every My food Bag order, wrapped around the frozen foods. The idea of growing microgreens on this wool came from my mum and I being sick of My food Bag not picking up the bags of wool, as they are meant to. So we opened the bag and realised it smells just like a farm – and then came to the realisation that this material will be able to hold moisture and grow plants!

“I also did some research on this designer called Jacob Olmedo and he created a rug with microgreen all over it which looked amazing.”

Charlotte says her garment was difficult to construct. ” I had never done this before and was basically making it up on the way,” she says.  “The time taken to make this garment was very confusing due to lockdowns, where we were not able to sew at home. We had to make a practice garment called a toile to ensure the garment will fit. Then once that was done we could start on our real garment. I reused the material from my toile as a lining for the main grey fabric on top. This lining was also lined with all natural beeswax (just like a beeswax wrap) as a waterproof layer since the garment will be wet from watering the microgreens. I would say this all took just under 2 months to make, considering all the testing and training that was done along the way.

“If it wasn’t for all that testing and trailing, my garment probably would not have worked at all, as my initial design is very different from my finished design.”

A fun and interesting topic of conversation, Charlotte says her dress is great for adding microgreens into her food. “We even ate the plants off my dress in class, and I now feed leftover microgreens to my bunny after I found him on our table eating my plant trials!

“Even though my garment is complete I’m still learning and experimenting. My next experiment is to try to grow some sort of air plant or wild flowers.”

Photo: On the right is the Instagram post My Food Bag posted on Charlotte. Well done!