Isabel Valdés Marín

Department: Contextual Design

A Matter of Time

Attics, wardrobes, garages and sheds; this is where the things that we no longer use end up. Once banished to such storage spaces, they do not see the light of day for decades. We forget about them, and feed our ever-growing consumer appetites with new supplies. “We transform things into junk, just by storing them,” says Isabel Valdés Marín. Concerned by this development, Valdés invented numerous ways to make us aware of these 'dead' objects.
Her imaginative suggestions include: a dress designed like a net so you can wear all of the clothes you have stashed away at once, and a suit storage bag that can be transformed into a dress, but also a coffin! In this way, her A Matter of Time project confronts us with the implications of our seemingly harmless hoarding habit. “Our material obesity steals time, money and space from us, all of which we could use for more interesting pursuits,” she explains. Valdés admits to being guilty of useless accumulation herself. Half of her summer wardrobe was used to fill the net dress, weighing as much as ten kilos – a literal reflection of how we are weighed down by our own materialism.