An insulated cruise employee makes incredible clothes out of paper bags

But in mid-March, the Covid-19 pandemic hit the Netherlands’ American ship and the journey took an unexpected turn.

After a period of 60 days stuck in the sea bearing many quarantines, the closure of ships and the prevalence of symptoms of coronavirus among hundreds of passengers and crew, Perry finally landed in the Netherlands and made a long trip to Australia by air.

Returning to her city of Perth, Perry was subjected to another compulsory quarantine in the hotel room for two weeks, without any physical interaction with the outside world.

To keep her mind active and engaged during this strange time, Perry decided to be creative.

Every day, the hotel staff provides three meals a day in paper bags. Long before, I collected a pile of them, and an idea began to form.

Perry was fashioning paper bags.

“But I think the paper bags that kept coming and coming are really the inspiration.”

The creative process

Ashleigh Perrie made this wonderful outfit from paper bags.

Courtesy of Ashley Perry

Above all, Perry needed to collect enough bags to put her intricate costumes together.

“The first design that appeared in my head was a dress, and I wanted something very luxurious, very formal, and as detailed as I could get the items I own,” she says.

“But the first thing I actually ended up doing was Toto, in the end, the Irina Bag as I called it, because I needed the bags to stay in shape so that’s one and for many other outfits I had to cut the bags and use different shapes.”

Perry becomes creative while isolated in a hotel room.

Courtesy of Ashley Perry

Besides ballet costume, Berry has created a tennis-friendly costume that includes a tennis racket, a tennis skirt and a mask called “The Maria Paper-pova”, similar to the platform that she called “Queen Quarantina” and of course, a luxurious dress that I conceived for the first time, dubbed “Diva Origami”.

She built fashion using whatever she could get – paper bags, of course, as well as napkins, biodegradable containers and disposable tableware – and using just scissors, duct tape and a roll of cotton. When the project came together, Perry shared snapshots of her creations and small excerpts from the action video with her mother and sister.

Berry says quarantine was not easy, but this was a fun, creative and exciting distraction.

“It was difficult after staying at sea for a long time, and it is clear that we have already done three quarantine periods on the ship,” she recalls.

“So I went back again and had to face another quarantine for two weeks and couldn’t figure it out, and finally hugged your family and friends at the airport when I arrived. It was mentally difficult, just thinking about” Oh, it’s a disappointment coming home. ”

But Perry said she also appreciated the time it takes to cope with the situation – her artistic outlet made time pass.

“It is time to rest,” she says. “It is only time to calm down and take care of myself after all I’ve gone through.”

Eye of the storm

Symptoms spread, four guests died on board, and others tested positive for the virus.

When the ports closed to Zandam, the American Netherlands deployed a second ship, Rotterdam, to provide relief and pick up healthy guests, but in the end both ships were injured.

The passengers eventually landed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on April 2, but the crew was not allowed to leave. Instead, the Netherlands had to sail workers across the Atlantic to the Netherlands.

“It was definitely a very difficult experience on board,” says Perry, who was symptomatic of Coved.

“It closed the whole ship, and the company handled it amazingly – it was a very difficult situation that nobody really had any experience dealing with. Our captain was awesome. They did everything they could as quickly as possible to stop the spread and to ensure that all guests were kept In safety “.

Perry described the experiment as a “true test of mental resilience.”

“We had a lot of confidence in one another, on the plane. Obviously, you had to stick with your fellow crew members and get into each other during the crisis. It was tough, but it was a very personal reinforcement experience, I think.”

At the end of May, the quarantine at the Berry Hotel ended, and finally she met her family.

Before leaving the hotel room, Perry portrayed herself modeling all of her creativity – and she tried her best to pack each other in her luggage.

She pressed there, but had to give up the majority for recycling.

When Perry shared a video of her creations on Facebook, cheerful friends and family began sharing him online and quickly spread.

“I’ve got great responses from everyone, only people appreciate how amazing and creative it was to be able to do that when you’re in a room for two weeks and you have nothing else to do,” says Perry.

Positive project

Perry hopes her project will make people smile.

Courtesy of Ashley Perry

Did the Perry experience make sailing for life?

No, she says, she loves how a cruise allows crew to travel around the world.

However, Berry hopes that the events of the past few months will lead to a reexamination of how the world reacts to a crisis at sea.

“The biggest problem we faced was that many countries closed their borders, and cruise companies were trying to do everything they could to bring us back home, and they just had difficulty not getting any kind of humanitarian aid to allow us to disembark,” says Perry.

“So, it would be interesting to see if something more positive could emerge from this experience – and maybe some policies could be put in place to deal with this kind of thing.”

Meanwhile, Perry is only happy that he put a smile on people’s faces during a difficult period.

“I think many people consider it positive in the whole” Coffed “pandemic and a nice thing to look at in the past, she says.

She was contacted by a group of different organizations interested in her work – from a museum and art gallery, to an organization that works with women suffering from PTSD.

In addition, Perry managed to get a few paper bags she had not yet converted and pressed into her case, so keep an eye out for more potential creations in the coming weeks.