Niki Marathia
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Material value
Week 4 of 6
Team
Design a way for textile waste to reveal its hidden value. Textiles are subject to complex processes of production, use, and disposal. Across various sectors such as fashion, hospitality, and entertainment, huge volumes of textiles are discarded, often before they have fulfilled their purpose. These include textiles such as offcuts, excess stock, worn linens, fabrics used in the entertainment industry, and textiles that have become damaged.

Project partner: FibreLab
Luis Winkelbrandt
Shuairuge Shu
Molly Wensley
Mohammed Maheen
Vanashree Chowdhury
Niki Marathia
Merrin O'Connor
Jaime Santos Guerrero
Yihan Zhong
Towel swap

Applying the same visual analysis to the towel swap as we did to our clothes swap, we found that some of us felt the owner's presence when the towel was in our space. I think this contributed to why only three of us used the towels on our skin. We also found that patterns made us more inclined to use them. I felt this had potential for stained towels, perhaps through dyeing techniques that create patterns rather than masking the stain entirely.

Click to expand

Figure 1. Towel swap visual diary: Niki
Figure 2. Towel swap visual diary: Vana
Figure 3. Towel swap visual diary: Lynn 
Figure 4. Towel swap visual diary: Jaime
Figure 5. Towel swap visual diary: Nicole
Figure 6. Towel swap visual diary: Luis
Figure 7. Towel swap visual diary: Merrin
Figure 8. Towel swap visual diary: Molly

Figure 9. Towel swap takeaways


The brief

Having accumulated a lot of research, we decided to project our brief on the wall and go through it again like we had during week 1. This helped us return to the concept of material histories, this time through the lens of hospitality, and nudged us to explore the stories of stained towels.

Figure 10. Our brief projected
Figure 10. Areas for further investigation
FibreLab textiles

We sourced 5kg of textiles from FibreLab. These comprised mostly of towels (face and body), but also two bathmats and one big bedsheet. Some of the textiles had visible stains, some felt worn, and others had rips. They were all professionally cleaned before given to FibreLab, so we were comfortable handling them.Having these discarded textiles, we wanted to get them in front of people to gauge their reactions. Molly and Jaime recruited three LCC students to help us. Merrin introduced the exercise, and I was taking notes. The notes below show what the participants said, recorded on my laptop in real time.   
Our intro
These are professionally cleaned textiles from the hospitality industry that we got from a textile reycling startup here in London.
The task
Using the textiles in front of you, try and gain an understanding of the textures, the smell, the quality, anything you notice about the textile.






We weren’t able to get the participants to engage with the towels on a deep level, I think largely because we rushed into the exercise feeling we were falling behind not having involved more people in our process yet. Regardless, we were able to hear about some obvious values linked to the discarded towels - mostly ways that they could be repurposed at home.
Towel funeral

To think about the towels beyond their utilitarian nature again, we hosted a towel funeral. Merrin wrote the eulogy, giving praise to Towely for his service in the industry. This activity got us to think about what might have led to his disposal.In retrospect, I think it would have been fun to organise a larger-scale funeral and invite people to say a few words about him. With the right prompts, we may have been able to get people in the spirit of our research more effectively.
Figure 11. The late Towely


Thank you all for joining us today in this celebration of life for Towely.

Towely was woven together in 2021. He was a beautiful, bright towel when he first made his way across the ocean to London, where he arrived at the Soho House hotel. He was so excited to fulfill his duty. He could not believe that he had been chosen to serve in such a respected institution that many people could only dream of going.

Towely was one of the hardest-working towels in the industry, working 24/7, except for his daily break in the rinse cycle. He is a pretty nosy towel, which made this job perfect for him. He loved witnessing couples fighting behind closed doors, overhearing secret affairs, and silently judging guests who used 4 towels in one night.

At work, Towely dried off hundreds of people over the years. From business travellers to hungover club-goers, Towely was always there, reliable and absorbent. But Towely was more than just a towel. He was a great listener. While he was not much of a talker, he was always a textile to cry on. 

Sadly, years in the hospitality industry took a toll on him. The endless washing cycles, chlorine exposure, and makeup stains that never came out make him feel used, not loved. In Towely’s final months, those textiles closest to him noticed the signs: frayed edges, bruises (stains), and he became much thinner. He wasn’t as soft as he used to be. 

Towely passed peacefully after being declared “too scratchy” by hotel management and was last seen heading toward the textile disposal bin, never to dry another guest again. He is survived by his partner bath Matt, and his daughter, a 6th month old hand towel, Dryannel. 

May he rest in peace 🕊️
Feedback

    In this week's tabletop presentation, our tutors helped us surface the hidden value in the FibreLab towels. We realised that the stains, rips and worn edges were akin to those of our own well-used towels at home. We started calling these imperfections personality, and the pristine state of the new hotel towels anonymity. Thinking back to our literature review and Kopytoff's (1986) concept of object biographies, we felt this connected well with the notion that objects accumulate histories through the people and events they encounter.

    Not a workshop

    Since earlier in the week we had been less successful in getting people to think beyond the towel's functional use, we decided to get some ideas from Claude.
    Our prompt
    We want to find out more about the personality traces discarded towels from hotels can have. We are interested in finding more about the contrasts between an object being part of a temporary space like a hotel room and permanent spaces like a home.     From Claude
    One person holds the towel and answers questions on its behalf. The other interviews. Where have you been? Who has touched you? What do you want? After three minutes they swap towels and roles.
    Figure 12. Introduction slide


    Figure 15. Mini workshop

    Figure 12. Respond as the towel 1/3
    Figure 13. Respond as the towel 2/3
    Figure 14. Respond as the towel 2/3

    Figure 16. Asking for feedback


    We got to trial the activity during the Friday 'not a workshop' workshop. We had 10 minutes to introduce the exercise, run it, and collect feedback, so we modified it so that participants responded in a few words rather than speaking as the towel for three minutes.
    People created a persona for the towel, namely one that was exhausted and overused. Our classmates admitted they felt bad about the towel, but still didn’t think they would use it. This inspired us to explore what might motivate people to do so.
    Hidden value

    Before the week ended, Jaime visualised our path to a hidden value to keep each other on the same page about where it emerged from

    Figure 17. Our path to a hidden value, drawn by Jaime Santos

    Sources
    Kopytoff, I. (1986) ‘The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process’, in Appadurai, A. (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, pp. 64–91. Cambridge University Press.