This team of designers from Cambodia turns waste into fashion. They find beauty in the trash.  Instead of dumping or giving fire to these trashes they convert it to fashion outfits.  From a dress inspired by the plume of a peacock and fashioned out of bottle caps and cement sacks to a black and orange tiger outfit made of plastic bags.

 The most exciting thing about this group is that this is a team of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender designers. By making catwalk-ready outfits from waste scooped off the streets of the Cambodian capital, the 24-year-old Sovannareach is now subverting that stereotype, along with a team of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender designers. This group of LGBT fashion designers in Cambodia crafts beauty from trash to battle discrimination.

 Violent attacks on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community are common in the conservative Southeast Asian nation, even though attitudes towards same-sex relationships have improved in recent years.

 According to Ith Sovannareach, founder of La Chhouk Recycled & Creative Fashion just five or 10 years ago, Cambodians saw the LGBT community as social trash. People saw them as unnatural strangers. But now there is less discrimination, as the community is getting more coverage on television and in newspapers about their capabilities.

Many of the costumes and their accompanying flamboyant headgear take inspiration from traditional Khmer clothing. Companies such as Coca-Cola, and Heineken’s Tiger Beer have hired Sovannareach’s team to design dramatic garments from their waste products and, late last month, the United Nations commissioned the group to hold a fashion show. Transgender activist Kuy Thida, who ran a small stall at the show promoting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, said about 6,000 same-sex couples live together in Cambodia, which does not recognize their relationships as legal civil partnerships or marriages.  Official disapproval discourages many in the lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender community from revealing their status.