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Our homegrown green designers

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In the three years since the Art Center College of Design adopted sustainability as one of its core values, students have responded with a wave of imaginative, bold projects. For instance, Spencer Nikosey is fabricating a line of ruggedly attractive Pop Art-influenced designer bags and totes made out of materials such as Army truck surplus tarps and salvaged city of Pasadena fire hoses that had been damaged and deemed no longer of use.

He then contracted with what he describes as an “old world” Los Angeles company to manufacture the bags, and accessorized them with numbered dog tags to give them the cachet of limited-edition exclusivity.

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A big part of the value of his bags, Nikosey believes, derives from their unusual pedigree and personal history. “To me, high-end is about the story and the feeling.”

Nikosey is part of school-wide push to make sustainability a core principle of all design, from conception to production, at the Pasadena school. In Sunday Calendar, Reed Johnson takes an in-depth look at how this focus is playing out on the artsy and influential campus.

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