Fallera costume crafted entirely from plastic and aluminium waste

FOR the second year running, the Valencia region's massive March Fallas fiestas are off the agenda due to the pandemic, but celebrations are still happening somehow or another – firework displays are still due to take place tonight (Friday), even if those watching will have to keep themselves spaced apart, and it's still a public holiday in the province of Valencia and large parts of those of Castellón and Alicante, so the date will not go by as though it were any other ordinary weekday.

Determined not to dispense with the splendid costumes, either, a mum-and-daughter team from Valencia city have shown the world how you can make a complete fallera outfit from the contents of the rubbish bin.

Rosa Montesa, a designer, and her mother Rosa Andrés, have spent the best part of six years creating the highly-elaborate dress, jewellery and hair accessories from tins, cans, plastic coffee capsules, household cleaning product bottles, water and fizzy drink bottles, disposable plastic cups, crisp packets, plastic bags, and just about anything else made from plastic or aluminium which would, or should, normally end up in the 'yellow bank', but which often, sadly, winds up in landfill, the countryside, rivers and seas, and even animals' and humans' bodies.

As any environmental specialist would stress, plastic isn't bad – in fact, plastic's great, because it lasts forever, keeps food fresh for much longer, and avoids trees having to be cut down to make paper or cardboard to do the job instead. What is, in fact, bad, is the way plastic is too often disposed of; additionally, manufacturing plastic means plundering natural resources, such as oil, using water and producing harmful carbon dioxide emissions.

If everyone recycled every last piece of plastic they got rid of, the environmental disaster its misuse is responsible for would practically disappear – no new plastic would need to be manufactured, because everyone's waste would just be turned back into wrappers and containers again, or into clothes.

And the two Rosas firmly believe that one woman's rubbish is another woman's treasure, having proven that a fiesta costume which would normally cost in region of €5,000 for the complete set can be created from household waste.

Rosa Montesa's YouTube channel has over 140,000 subscribers and has clocked up more than 28 million hits since she launched it in 2013, showing off her multiple creations using disposable materials and the processes she follows to make them.

And we're not talking crude handicrafts such as painting half a Coca-Cola bottle to use as a pen-holder, or stringing milk carton tops together to make a belt. Her work is extremely intricate, and her inventions look like something you would find in a mainstream clothing or jewellery shop with an exceptionally hefty price tag attached.

“The Fallas, recycling, and working women are three topics that are very much the order of the day right now, and all of them are reflected in this project,” she says.

Water bottles, coffee capsules, tins, cans, and even sunflower-seed husks

Using recycled polyester – which is basically plastic bottles turned into thread – for the base of the dress, multi-coloured plastic containers are cut into geometric shapes and sealed onto the fabric in a mosaïc, shreds of drinks cans are fused onto the collar, and flattened and moulded into flower shapes.

Hair combs are made from tins and from coffee capsules, and even the shoes are made from plastic bottles in blue and pink. 

Rosa Andrés stitched it all together, as she is a seamstress by profession and has sewn hundreds of fallera dresses in her time – albeit these are normally made from silk, satin, braid and nylon, with oceans of lace and solid silver or gold for the hair accessories.

As shown in picture three, the Rosas made the latter from the tins which Jean-Paul Gaultier's Classique perfume comes in, meaning the French designer's name is emblazoned across it, making it look like haute couture.

Other pieces of food tins and drinks cans are hammered and shaped into a necklace, earrings, bracelets, hair-pins, hair-grips, brooches, and adornments sewn onto the bodice of the dress.

Some of them are even made using sunflower-seed shells, which are strung together and 'plated' in tin.

And the family creation has gone global even faster than the fiestas themselves.

National Geographic features Valencia woman's creation

Whilst, technically, world-famous, the Fallas fiestas are not as well-known outside of Spain as, for example, the Semana Santa or Easter week parades, so a great introduction for the rest of the planet comes in the shape of a National Geographic article about how to make the entire get-up from plastic and aluminium waste.

The prestigious, long-running US-based magazine contacted Rosa Montesa, keen to publish a feature about her biggest creation yet in its young people's supplement Kids vs Plastic, a pull-out aimed at raising awareness among children of the urgent need to manage waste responsibly and to do their bit to protect and preserve the environment.

It includes 'how-to' sections, in print, online and in videos, covering fun inventions, arts and crafts that they can try out using discarded, surplus domestic material.

National Geographic needed good-quality, high-resolution photographs for its double-page printed copy, so Rosa and Rosa contacted Eva Ripoll, a professional camerawoman who had worked with the daughter many times in the past creating catalogues of her crafts – pictures which led to their being sold all over Spain and even on different continents.

Eva, who has more than 25 years' experience in photographing the visual arts and crafts, said the fallera garb project was 'the most exciting' of her whole career.

“Publishing one's pictures in a magazine of such enormous quality, exceptional standards, acclaim and prestige is any working photographer's dream,” she admits.

She is pictured here (right) with Rosa Montesa in the latter's patio at home, which looks as though it is adorned with plants and flowers, but is actually decorated entirely with her own handicrafts made from disposable plastic.