$This dress was commissioned by the Vienna Ball of Sciences. After I wore my nitrile glove dress to the ball in 2024, they invited me to be part of the official 2025 program.

You can read the official program notes here and the full writeup here.

To source all of the used pipettes for this massive upcycling project, I collaborated with the ISTA Sustainability Group, the Vienna BioCenter, and the University of Vienna. All of the pipettes were donated by marine biologists who use them for collecting and handling seawater samples. Although these laboratories do collect some of their single-use plastic waste for recycling, these particular pipettes are made from low-density polyethylene (LDPE), which is unfortunately rejected by most recycling facilities as too difficult or not cost-effective to recycle, so the plastic gets incinerated instead.

It took about 3,000 transfer pipettes and 300+ hours to make this dress. Apart from the base layer consisting of a thin layer of nylon organza and an upcycled bra (my mom’s), the dress is entirely hand-sewn. Beneath the dress, there is a bustle (not pictured) made of bubble wrap packaging (donated by one of the labs) and the straps salvaged from the bra.

The three participating labs who collected the pipettes consume 100 to 150 of them per lab each week. Collection ran from October to December 2024. About 4,000 pipettes were donated but not all were used in the making of the dress.

I wore the dress to the ball on January 25, 2025 at Vienna City Hall, where I also exhibited my other upcycled lab plastics sculptures that same evening. Check out the exhibition here.

Both the pipette dress and the nitrile glove dress are currently on a little European tour, being shipped from one sustainability event to another, displayed at university and research institutes who are also looking to raise awareness for sustainable science.