ASU fashion designer’s sustainable practices give new life to old clothes. Here’s how
Galina Mihaleva’s design studio is a kaleidoscope of colors, textures and patterns, a reflection of the garments she creates.
Large windows flood the studio with natural light, dancing off the rich fabric and hand-stitched details of her garments, arranged in a room at Arizona State University’s downtown Phoenix campus.
Clothes are everywhere: Complete outfits adorn mannequins, student projects fill worktables and cast-off items and textiles salvaged from Goodwill sit in bags and boxes, ready for a second life. And in her work, that means more than passing items along.
Amid the chaos, Mihaleva’s skill is obvious, but there is more to her designs than meets the eye.
One of her recent collections is a felt jacket line, using discarded, moth-eaten luxury men’s wool jackets and cashmere sweaters from secondhand shops. She deconstructs the original garments, layering colorful felt to create new designs against black jackets.
She also embeds chia seeds into the wool. This allows jacket owners to plant the jacket when they want to get rid of it instead of sending it to a landfill.
“When people get tired of wearing them, they can simply bury it in the Earth and something symbolically beautiful will grow to close the loop, giving back to nature,” she said.
Sustainability and the human experience are integrated into her styles — symbolically and literally — as she “paints” with felt, inlaying different colors of wool to create human faces and eyes into the biodegradable jackets.
She believes reusing materials and giving them new life is the future of fashion.
Fashion is one of the most wasteful and polluting industries. In the U.S., 85% of textiles are combusted or sent to landfills every year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Production is often water-intensive and contributes to carbon emissions and water pollution.
Through her techniques and teaching, Mihaleva hopes to contribute to a sustainable future for the industry. By adapting traditional methods to reduce waste and integrating technology into her designs, she aims to help humans survive on a warming planet.
“As a fashion designer, I do not want to pollute more,” she said. “I want to be responsible, and that’s why I’m teaching my students the techniques that are sustainable.”
A life and career rooted in sustainability
As a child, Mihaleva would sneak into her mother’s closet to admire silk taffeta dresses, fascinated by the sound and feel of the fabric.
“I still can hear the sound,” she reminisced. “I cut everything possible to make clothes for my dolls. They were all like, ‘What’s wrong with that kid?’”
She credits her family for her love of fashion. Her grandmother first put a needle and thread in Mihaleva’s hands at age four. Mihaleva grew up cross-stitching and weaving with her, and eventually, her aunt came home with a brochure for art school.
Although she was good at math, Mihaleva pursued fashion, leaving her sister to take a more traditional path to become an accountant. She has focused on textiles, completing a master’s degree in apparel and textiles and a doctorate in smart textiles and wearable technology.
“That sustainable approach is rooted in me because that’s how I grew up,” she said. “In my country, Bulgaria, we lived sustainably. We always considered materials, and we never threw things out.”
She uses zero-waste techniques, sourcing materials from secondhand shops or friends to save garments and materials from landfills.
A friend donated her divorced daughter’s wedding dress, which Mihaleva dyed brown and purple and adorned with lace flowers. She bought children’s football shoulder pads from Goodwill, which she’s using for a costume entry for the World of WearableArt competition.
Mihaleva has also integrated traditional design techniques into her work, making them more sustainable.
She uses shibori in her collections, a traditional Japanese tie-dye and heat-shaping technique, but with polyester. Using marbles, she ties the fabric into a bubble-like pattern and steams the material.
After it cools, she removes the ties but the shapes remain. She does not cut the material but molds the fabric to suit her needs and hand-stitches the seams with fishing line.
Secondhand polyester is her fabric of choice for this technique, as it is a petroleum-based, polluting material that is not biodegradable. By reusing existing polyester fabrics, she can lengthen its lifespan and reduce waste.
It’s a time-intensive process; one design can take weeks to complete.
Mihaleva also experiments with biomaterials, creating leather and plastic alternatives using kombucha, fish skin and bioplastics with gelatin.
“In my research, I’m looking into innovative ‘esthetics’, meaning they need to be associated with ethics,” Mihaleva said. “I don’t care about a beautiful dress anymore if it’s made with silk dyed by Indian children.”
A role model: Teaching the next generation of fashion designers
Mihaleva often spends late nights at her studio, staying behind to work on her designs alongside her students as they complete their assignments. She has integrated sustainable techniques into her courses at ASU.
“I want to be a role model,” she said. “Of course, you can’t force them, but you can be a model. I teach them sustainable techniques to give them the tools if they want to use them.”
Ciara Biscette, a third-year fashion design student who has modeled Mihaleva’s designs, has taken multiple classes with her, learning to source materials and dye garments naturally. She said there is never a dull moment in Mihaleva’s classes.
Biscette hopes to become a costume designer after graduation and plans to use sustainable techniques during her career. She hopes the industry will become less wasteful, but also appreciates how these techniques can save students’ and designers’ money.
“When you’re looking for materials, these days they’ve gotten really expensive,” Biscette said. “It’s always good to repurpose materials, especially if you go to Goodwill and buy a pair of jeans to make into a skirt instead of buying a whole yard or two of denim fabric.”
Mihaleva also encourages her students to take an interdisciplinary approach to their education, integrating other fields like engineering and ecology into their designs.
In her fashion design and wearable technology course, students collaborated with engineering students to create garments embedded with technology to help children with cancer. The designs, like an LED teddy bear or a backpack with wings, can monitor their vitals, remind them to breathe or provide comfort.
“When students say they’re a fashion designer, I tell them they need to be plus something else,” she said. “You cannot be just a fashion designer, you need to be well-rounded. We live in a different time.”
The future of fashion, sustainably
Mihaleva hopes her techniques extend beyond the confines of her studio walls by sharing her methods with students and peers who can help create a more eco-friendly and socially responsible field.
“I will share any technique if someone can take it and make it better,” she said.
Mihaleva considers clothes a “second skin,” protecting us from the elements. This vision has inspired her next project working with ASU’s robotic manikin, ANDI. ANDI is a thermal manikin that mimics bodily functions like sweating, breathing and walking.
Researchers have used ANDI to understand how heat affects the human body. Mihaleva hopes to create a bodysuit that will respond to body temperature, adjusting to keep the person cool or warm.
She plans to test materials that adapt to heat and cold, working with scientists from Cornell, ASU, and ANDI. Mihaleva believes nanoparticles can be woven into textiles to help people survive climate extremes, particularly in Phoenix during heat waves.
“I want to make sure clothing can give comfort by changing temperature,” she said. “Clothing is always for protection. Of course, we can use shading to keep people cool, but what if it’s built into the textile?”
Hayleigh Evans covers environmental issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Send tips or questions to [email protected].
Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
Sign up for AZ Climate, our weekly environment newsletter, and follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and @azcenvironment on Facebook, X and Instagram.
You can support environmental journalism in Arizona by subscribing to azcentral today.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: ASU designer uses sustainable practices to give old garments new life