Raglan local Elizabeth Hosking took home the Supreme Award at ReStyle 2010, held on Saturday night in Hamilton. Liz’s mermaid outfit was made up of 2500 bag tags and took more than three years to make.
Restyle is an annual fashion show which encourages people to recycle waste to create wearable art.
Liz says she created her outfit to show how one small plastic item can prove to be so destructive. “There is something like 2.4 million pounds of plastic entering the ocean every hour,” she says. “It’s a statistic that shocked me.”
Bread tags were donated by family and friends. Liz drilled holes in the four corners of each tag and welded the pieces together using fishing nylon.