DUDE launches The Rubbish Collection

On World Cleanup Day, creative agency DUDE unveiled this fun campaign led by social enterprise The Skill Mill, which provides employment for young ex-offenders in watercourse and horticulture services. 

A long summer of barbecues and picnics has left the paths, shore and water in London's canals filled with discarded bottles, cans, takeaway boxes and other junk. The solution? A 14-part fashion range which takes trash out of the canal and incorporates it into people’s wardrobes.

Crafted by local artist Marta Morientes, The Rubbish Collection is a capsule clothing line inspired by - and aiming to solve - one of the biggest issues facing East London’s famous canals. Not Lycra-clad cycling louts, but litter.

The collection features a series of quirky designs that pay homage to real items of rubbish picked out of Regent’s Canal, recreated in paint by local artist Marta Morientes. From flat caps featuring sunken bikes to T-shirts emblazoned with crisp packets and shorts that let wearers show off the junk on their trunks, Morientes has channelled her characteristic colourful and eclectic style into a series of unique patterns that epitomise the playfully trashy aesthetic.