#ReadYourTags

#ReadYourTags is a data visualization project on United States apparel consumption by country of origin. In 2010, Americans purchased 20.48 billion garments; only two percent of these purchases were manufactured domestically. The data used for this project was collected by the American Apparel and Footwear Association. #ReadYourTags is a physical installation and data visualization project that grew out of ITP's Data Representation class taught by Jer Thorpe. 

Inspired by Elizabeth Cline's book "Overdressed" and my own experiences working in the fashion industry, #ReadYourTags is a physical installation on United States apparel consumption broken down by origin of manufacturer. This project takes big data collected by the AAFA and uses 100 tee-shirts on a metal clothing rack as a physical bar graph to represent where American consumers’ clothing was manufactured in 2010. Each color of tee shirts is associated with a particular country or group of countries which are: CAFTA-DR (a free trade agreement between the US and Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic), China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, United States, Mexico, and the rest of the world. Random tags are pinned through shirts throughout the installation that give information about manufacturing garments and the ecological effects that it occurs during clothing production and manufacturing. Per example, one tag reads "China produces 36% of the world's polyester."

This project is designed to teach the user about where their clothing comes from and environmental affects of said clothing. 

Skills: Concept development, data parsing, data analysis, in-depth concept research, data visualization 

Tools: Processing, Excel, Illustrator, curation of physical space and objects