Students turned plastic bags, cardboard cereal boxes and red solo cups into runway ready outfits at Green GW’s fifth annual “trashion” show.
More than 50 people gathered in the Marvin Center Friday night for Green GW’s fifth annual “trashion” show – an event where students who created clothing out of trash and recycled materials had their looks modeled down a runway. Eight designs were featured from both individual students and student organizations like Allied and Pride, Fossil Free GW and Phi Sigma Pi.
Two looks tied for the winning title – a vest made from woven egg cartons and cereal boxes created by sophomore Tanmatra Bhanti and a top and skirt made from colored cardboard boxes and plastic and paper bags by freshmen Noa Leiter and Sarah Bacharach.
Bhanti, one of the winners and the director of external affairs for Green GW, said that working on her garment was therapeutic amidst the stress of school work.
“It was really fun to do,” Bhanti said. “It was a nice distraction from homework, a really good procrastination method I’ve found.”
Bhanti said that the event aimed to bring the art and green community together to discuss sustainable fashion.
“It’s a really big aspect of people’s lives,” Bhanti said. “Everyone buys clothes and we don’t ever really think about the environmental implications of that.”
Leiter and Bacharach, members of Green GW and the other two contestants whose design tied for first place, said they came up with the idea for the design before deciding on what materials would work best to bring their ideas to life.
“We wanted to do something a little more intricate and trendy with a pop of color,” Bacharach said.
Leiter said that while the design was made from recycled materials and wouldn’t be worn on the street, she wanted to ensure that it still looked stylish and could be worn if it were made from other materials.
“We based it off something that if it were in real, not in trash form, you could actually potentially wear it, and kind of transformed it into recycled material,” Leiter said.
Judges included zero-waste designer Tabitha St. Bernard-Jacobs, David Paige, a professor in the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, and Sen. Keiko Tsuboi, ESIA-U, who has worked as a part of Fossil Free GW to advocate for sustainable initiatives on campus, including the University’s divestment from fossil fuels.
St. Bernard-Jacobs, the designer behind a sustainable fashion line based in New York City called Tabii Just, was the show’s keynote speaker. She said her mission in the fashion industry is to create zero-waste clothing that is both stylish and sustainable.
“Responsible fashion is fashion with a conscious,” St. Bernard-Jacobs said.
St. Bernard-Jacobs said that she wanted to incorporate issues of sustainability and fair trade when launching her fashion line.
“I felt like this was a challenge I could embrace as a career,” she said.
St. Bernard-Jacobs concluded her speech by leaving the audience with five pieces of advice. She told the audience to find creative ways to shop less, keep their clothes longer and not be “preachy” when discussing sustainability.
Finally, she told students to think about the future in terms of fashion and sustainability and to “stay woke.”
