“You look trashy” may soon be a compliment.
A clothing line made of “repurposed” uniforms once worn by the city’s garbage collectors on their smelly rounds is hitting the runway at Fashion Week next month, city officials said Tuesday.
Designer Heron Preston, who has worked with Kanye West and Nike, is taking gritty street fashion to bizarre new heights by teaming up with the Department of Sanitation.
The Dumpster-chic duds will be hotter than a trash can in August, says Preston’s publicist, Sydney Reising.
They’ll feature chunks of green and orange DSNY uniforms along with funky silk-screened patterns and patches, Reising said. The unisex gear will available online and in pop-up stores.
Vogue magazine has exclusive rights to the first photos.
The idea may be quirky — but it’s not rubbish, one fashion expert told The Post.
“Surprisingly, I think it will take off. Maybe not forever, but this season. It’s definitely going to make a statement. And I think fashion people will be really curious about it,” said New York-based fashion consultant Dawn Del Russo.
Models have been catwalking everything from recycled construction-worker gear to tennis shoes “designed to look dirty and used” in recent months, she added.
“Recycling clothes is very trendy — taking something old and making it new. And there’s been a real resurgence in the industrial side of fashion. This is harder and edgier,” she said.
The trashy fashion line aims to help keep clothes out of landfills and honors New York’s Strongest, “who are often invisible to the 8.5 million people they serve,” according to letter sent out by the Sanitation Department publicizing the clothing.
Preston — who also sells $850 shoes and $270 jackets through his high-end clothing company, HPC Trading — says littering is so last season.
The designer came up with the idea for the environmentally friendly duds earlier this summer after he got entangled in a garbage bag while swimming in the Mediterranean, according to a Sanitation spokesman.
The agency is peddling 25 tickets to the Sept. 7 fashion show, dubbed “Uniform,” at $2,030 a pop.
Proceeds will go to a new foundation for New York’s garbage workers and an “ educational museum” that will feature artifacts and sanitation equipment dating back to the late 1800s.