The designer is challenging overproduction through zero-waste design and sculptural pieces made from discarded plastic.
Fashion brands launch eco-conscious capsule collections, switch to environmentally friendly packaging, and promote their use of organic materials to prove their allegiance to sustainability.
But industry veteran and now independent designer Jussara Lee offers a simpler, harsher solution: “The only way to be sustainable is to stop producing so much.”
Lee moved from Brazil to New York City in 1987 to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She quickly became known in the nightlife scene for her outfits, using clubs as testing grounds for her designs and launching pads for her fashion career.
By the mid-1990s, Lee had built a career around elegantly tailored collections picked up by Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman, and international retailers, especially in Japan. She eventually began to scale back. She moved from wholesale to retail, then to custom, one-of-a-kind garments.
Lee’s relationship to fashion changed after learning more about the industry’s environmental consequences. She took her “degrowth journey” seriously. With no obvious way to downsize further, she began making clothing from fabric trimmings in her archive and, more recently, plastic discards.
“I believe the most eco option is to use what you already own and close the production tap,” she said.
She created Hand Me Up, a zero-waste concept that applies couture techniques to existing clothing and materials. Sustainability becomes a technical and creative challenge, not a compromise. Menswear tailoring, hand embroidery, natural dyeing, hand weaving, braiding, and pleating become ways to transform everyday items. Her goal is to use up the materials she already owns, avoiding what she calls “postmortem trash.”
Plastic is her ultimate adversary. “I avoid plastic like the devil and yet plastic still breaks through my barricades,” she said. “A friend brings flowers wrapped in cellophane, a dinner guest arrives with a dessert covered in Saran Wrap, a client sends clothes to be mended in a box sealed with plastic tape.”
Lee saved these materials in a pile and put them to use when LOT-EK – an architecture and design studio that opens up its Yellow Wall as a gallery for aligned art – approached her to do a fashion show. For the show, Lee produced 14 sculptural outfits from the plastic, which are hanging in the studio throughout July.
Unveiled to a packed house, the collection is a spectacle – not your average upcycling project. The sculptural pieces have the unbelievable quality of high-concept fashion. There is a billowy white dress made of plastic bags and some materials so disguised they are impossible to identify.
For Lee, spectacle is key because it can disarm people. “The show engaged the spectator visually and emotionally, making it easy to deliver the serious topic of planetary destruction,” she said.
Lee knows that conversations around sustainability can become moralizing or guilt-inducing. She recently asked a hostess if she would consider joining Plastic Free July, offering to bring utensils and wash dishes. The hostess did not receive the request as playful and collaborative, but instead felt judged.
Lee finds “power in restraint.” Her rigorous zero-waste lifestyle is an opportunity for creative problem-solving, a resistance to convenience at any cost. Solar panels power her home. She shares an electric car with her partner, line-dries laundry, uses soap bars for cleaning, buys seasonal and local food, composts, avoids online shopping when possible, and buys nothing new. She gardens, cooks at home, makes her own staples, and avoids waste wherever she can.
She also acknowledges that advocating for less is easier from a position of plenty. People struggling to meet basic needs, she says, should not be held to the same expectations. What feels easy for one person may feel difficult for another. “This is not about getting a perfect score,” she said. “Small strides count significantly.”
After decades in the fashion industry, Lee has settled into a radical form of creativity. She is not asking what else fashion can produce. Her work is evidence that fashion does not need to become less beautiful to become more responsible. Beauty can actually emerge from restraint.
“I hit my legacy phase and am now nurturing new talents,” she said. “I want to save the world but can’t do it on my own.”
LOT-EK Studio 620 E 9th St, Nyc, Ny.Storefront Monday to Friday, 10am – 6pm. All images of the collection and store courtesy of LOT-EK. Jussara Lee portrait courtesy of the designer.
