During a month associated with the “January blues”, one woman in Ireland has been having an altogether more colourful time.
Fashion designer Taryn de Vere has been dressing up each day as household items ranging from sink unblocker to a packet of curry powder.
She set herself the creative challenge after realising she would spend much of January at home due to Covid concerns.
Her outfits have since gained widespread attention globally.
Speaking to the BBC, Ms de Vere, who lives in the county of Donegal, said that she’d decided to take January off after working for the last two years.
But with Covid restrictions in place across the country and Omicron cases on the rise, she decided that staying in would be the best way to spend her month, and wanted to give herself a creative challenge.
The only rule? She could not buy anything new to create the outfits.
“As I was opening the fridge, as I was opening the cupboard, I’d see different things around the place, and I would think, okay I’ve got the colours to do that,” she said.
She said that not buying new items was very important to her from a sustainable fashion standpoint. But she added that as a fashion accessories designer, she had more clothes than most to play with.
Ms de Vere has made a point of dressing colourfully for the last decade or so after coming out of what she described as an abusive relationship.
As part of the healing process, she said that she “started dressing more flamboyantly and coming out of myself a bit more”.
In doing the challenge, her hope was that she would “bring a smile to people’s faces” during a “tough time for many.”
But after posting her outfits on social media, she was shocked by the attention she got.
Day 20 of dressing like things in my house. Today I am a tub of Bisto.#ObjectDressChallenge pic.twitter.com/aDFXQEEQya
— Taryn de Vere (@TarynDeVere) January 20, 2022
“I really didn’t imagine, not in a million years, that I would be talking to journalists all over the world about it.”
Ms de Vere, who’s originally from Sydney in Australia, has since appeared on TV in Germany, Australia and the US.
And for February she plans to tweak her challenge and take requests to dress up as her fans’ household items.
