Trash is a relative term.

The 1995 Academy Award winner for best costume design accepted her award in a dress recycled entirely from American Express gold cards. What is done in the name of survival in many parts of the world has become "designed reuse" in America. And recycling seems to have become an end in itself in the world of late 20th century haute couture.

Isaac Mizrahi, one of our nation's most exclusive dress designers, recently unveiled a spring fashion line that featured "sequins" made from recycled beverage cans. As if to accentuate the ironies and opportunities of global recycling, the Mizrahi Company chronicled this line's complicated production cycle: first the cans were collected by the homeless of New York City and flattened by immigrant groups in New Jersey. They were next shipped to Paris where the pailettes (sequins) were cut. Finally, the pailettes and the silk fabric pieces cut in New York were shipped to India, where seamstresses sewed them to the fabric.

Lee Carter is an American designer and wholesaler of a complete line of recycled specialty objects. The designs for his products are based on traditional folk Catholic tinwork in Mexico -- nichos, reliquaries, and frames -- but with a contemporary "twist" that appeals to his hip trans-national clientele. Namely, the tin is recycled from discarded beer, fruit, battery, and vegetable cans, with the product labels showing as a conscious stylistic design.

While Lee dictates the designs and dimensions, the objects themselves are fabricated in central Mexico by the Granados family, traditional tinsmiths from the town of San Miguel de Allende. Once produced, the objects are distributed to folk art and craft dealers in the United States, Germany, and Japan.

Some of Carter's copyright pieces combine sacred and profane images into visual puns. In this piece, an apple juice can frame surrounds an image of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. As his assistant remarks about the visual play on words and images, "Either you get it or you don't."