baltic sea blue
Baltic Sea Blue is an experiment in reversing the trajectory from value to waste.
The project explores whether design can intervene after a material has lost its original value, creating greater value than existed before.
THE IDEA
Baltic Sea Blue began with a question: can design reverse the trajectory from value to waste?
When a textile reaches the end of its intended use, most systems concerned with waste focus on retaining what value is left. Often the material moves downwards: it survives, but in a form worth less than the one it had before.
I wanted to test the opposite direction.
Could a material that had already been classified as waste become more valuable than it had been in its original use?
I worked with discarded bed linen from Tallink’s hospitality operations. Within that system, the textiles had completed the function they were made for and had lost their value. For me, that was the starting point rather than the end.
Instead of breaking the textiles down into fibre, I kept the existing material intact. The linen was collected and selected piece by piece, then industrially dyed and transformed into garments.
The use of industrial processes was deliberate. Making a single valuable object from discarded material would answer one question, but I was interested in another: could the direction from value to waste be reversed beyond the scale of a one-off piece?
The experiment was not about preserving the value that remained in the material. It was about adding value after that value had already been lost.
Discarded Tallink bed linen, hand-sorted and prepared for dyeing, 2021
REVERSING VALUE
I worked with discarded bed linen from Tallink’s hospitality operations. Within that system, the textiles had completed the function they were made for and had lost their value. For me, that was the starting point rather than the end.
The linen was collected and sorted by hand. Each piece was selected individually, then bundled and prepared for industrial dyeing in different shades of blue.
Instead of breaking the textiles down into fibre and beginning again, I kept the existing material intact. Its previous use remained embedded in the fabric while colour became the first intervention in changing what that material could become.
THE BALTIC SEA
The Baltic Sea was not simply a reference for the colour of the collection. It was already part of the material’s history.
The discarded linen came from Tallink — from a system of travel and hospitality built around movement across the Baltic Sea. Before becoming part of the project, these textiles had already belonged to this geography.
I returned to that context when developing the collection. The Baltic Sea is never one blue. Its colour shifts between blue, grey and green with light, weather and movement. These changing tones became the palette for dyeing the textiles.
The sea also offered a way of thinking about transformation. Water is never fixed in one state or form. I was interested in approaching the material in the same way — not as something moving along a straight line from production to use and finally to waste, but as something that could change state and acquire new value.
For Tallinn Design Festival in 2021, Baltic Sea Blue developed into a performance as part of D_O_M — Disain on Moes.
The discarded Tallink linen took on different roles within the experiment. Some of the textiles had been dyed and transformed into garments. The remaining sheets — the ones not used for the garments — returned in their original form, becoming part of the performance itself.
Moved through the space, the sheets formed waves around the models. The Baltic Sea, already present in the material’s origin and in the shifting blue-grey tones of the garments, became physical — a landscape made from the same discarded material, something the bodies moved through.
This extended the experiment beyond the garments. The intervention did not have to result in another object. The same discarded material could acquire value through different forms of transformation: one part became clothing, while another became movement, landscape and space.
The performance was created in collaboration with the D_O_M creative team, directed by Anni Zupping, with creative direction by Piret Mägi, lighting by Reelika Palk, sound by Kenn-Eerik Kannike and visuals by Carmen Seljamaa.
Performance documentation: Jane Vogt, Juhan Riistop and Kaie Kiil.
AN EXTENDED REALITY
The performance introduced another layer through augmented reality.
Using their own mobile phones, the audience could access an additional experience within the physical space. Through the screen, digital fish appeared among the models, garments and moving waves of fabric.
The physical performance remained unchanged, but another reality became visible through the device. Experiencing it required an action from the viewer: taking out a phone, scanning the code and choosing to enter that additional layer.
This shifted the relationship between the work and its audience. The viewer was no longer only observing the intervention, but participating in how it became visible.
This experiment became a starting point for a question I continued to explore in Scan Me: what happens when a personal device becomes part of the relationship between a person and physical space?
Augmented reality and documentation: Taavi Varm.
RETURN
The final images for Baltic Sea Blue were photographed on a Tallink ship, returning the transformed material to the environment it had originally come from.
The textiles had once existed there as bed linen. When they could no longer fulfil that function, they left the system as discarded material.
They returned in a different form.
Dyed, cut and reconstructed as garments, the same textiles came back on board carrying a different function, identity and value.
The context remained the same. The relationship of the material to that context had changed.
Photography — Kertin Vasser
Styling — Mari-Ly Kapp
Model — Milena Urvantseva
In collaboration with Tallink
Thank you to Katri Link
ONE OF A KIND
Although Baltic Sea Blue tested whether the transformation could work through industrial processes, the result was never standardised.
Every textile was collected and selected individually. They differed in age, use, composition and wear. During dyeing, those differences became visible: each piece absorbed colour differently, creating variations in tone, depth and surface that could not be precisely repeated.
I chose to keep those differences rather than eliminate them.
The garments were cut from these individually transformed textiles. Even when the construction is the same, the material carries its own colour, marks and character.
Each Baltic Sea Blue piece is therefore one of a kind — because the history of the material and the way it responds to transformation make exact repetition impossible.
A selection of original Baltic Sea Blue pieces is still available. For enquiries, please get in touch.
Baltic Sea Blue began with a question: can design reverse the trajectory from value to waste?
The experiment suggests that value does not end when a material is classified as waste. Through intervention, the same material can acquire a different use, context and meaning — and with them, a different value.
The question that remains is whether this shift can go further: can something considered waste become more valuable than it was before?