Reduce. Reuse. Runway!: Fashion Club’s ‘Reimagine Trashion Show’ and thrift pop-up shop

By Antonio Machado

Copy Editor

Fashion Club hosted the first “Reimagine Trashion Show” alongside a thrift pop-up shop in the Dwight Performing Arts Center on Dec. 3.

The trashion show featured garments from six designers, each one constructed out of a selection of donated upcycled fabrics.

Fashion Club President Aili Schiavoni said, “The textiles that we got for the designers to select from for this competition all came from textile donations of some kind to our department.

“We put out a request for damaged, unwanted, or scrap textiles to our fashion department to see if there was anything that we already had that people would be interested in giving a new opportunity to have a life,” she added.

Fashion Design & Retailing Professor and Campus Sustainability Coordinator Ruirui Zhang said, “This year is very unique and special because they are really trying to promote the philosophy behind it, which is reimagining fashion from a functionality and sustainability perspective.”

The thrift pop-up was held before doors opened for the trashion show and opened again after it concluded. The pop-up featured various clothing, jewelry, and accessories - all donated by students, faculty, or “really nice and wonderful people,” according to Fashion Club Social Media Chair Emily Crossin.

Prices were kept below $10, excluding some vintage and designer pieces, said Crossin. “We wanted to make sure that we were creating a price list that was affordable to college students.”

All proceeds from the pop-up event will be going to the student study tour to Tokyo and Vietnam, said Crossin.

“Although the trip is expensive, we want to make sure that all students can equally afford it, not just the lucky few,” she added.

Fashion Club Vice President Emma-Claire Vanderslice said, “Our trip is going to be educating us about garment manufacturing, sustainability, and business, and I felt that this sort of event would really encapsulate all of those kinds of qualities.

“It was really a collaboration with the Fashion Club. We advertised garment donations, and the faculty and staff in particular really showed up and showed out, providing so much inventory for us to sell,” they added.

Schiavoni said over $500 was raised, and they “had over 150 attendees, which is huge for our club.”

The Fashion Club intends to have another upcycling event with any leftover fabric and accessories not sold at the thrift pop-up in the future. 

Following the pop-up, doors opened for the trashion show and Nathan Piette took to the stage to host the competition.

Piette said he “became familiar with the Fashion Club when [their] paths during a community cleanup on campus.” 

Piette said he is the president of the Volunteers Club which organizes “groups on campus to volunteer through various charitable causes - one of them is sustainability. And on that day, between us, the Fashion Club, and Keep Framingham Beautiful, almost 20 people took a whole bag of trash each off this campus.”

Schiavoni said, “I actually worked very closely with the department chair on trying to realize a new vision for what the trashion show could be in terms of sustainability. 

“Dr. Ruirui Zhang of the [Fashion] department just became our campus sustainability coordinator, so in honor of a sustainability project that she hosted in spring of 2024, we decided to emulate a similar process of using textiles that are provided to the designers themselves … instead of buying more materials for themselves,” Schiavoni added.

Crossin said, “Each year, more than 60 million tons of fast fashion garments end up in landfills, contributing to greenhouse gasses. As designers and merchandisers, we are responsible for our impact on the environment to remain mindful and educated on the implementation of sustainability within the fashion industry.”

Crossin said designers in the trashion show will “not only be judged on the general execution of the design, if it was clearly purposeful and well-planned, the overall creativity of the garment, its complexity and intrigue, and the designs functionality, whether it’s complete and well-structured, but they will be judged on the sustainability of the design, whether they used all or as much as possible of the selected material.” 

The show was judged by Zhang, President Nancy Niemi, Fashion Professor Pamela Sebour-Cable, and Independent Association of Framingham State Alumni member Judy Fitzgerald.

Competing in the show was Senior Courtney Shires-Freeman, Senior Christian Taylor, Freshaman Devin McFarlin, Junior Stephanie Fordjour, Junior Isabelle Dolezal, and Freshmen Sarah Akinbuwa.

After a brief runway, a QR code was displayed to allow audience members to vote for the winner of the Audience Choice.

Once the voting period closed, Dolezal was announced as the Audience Choice.

Dolezal said, “I didn’t even know that was a thing, so I’m honored.”

She said she found inspiration for the quilted design of her garment through the lens of  computer pixels. “When I saw them I was like, ‘Oh my God! They look like computer pixels,’ and so I feel like our generation is one of the last to have a childhood where not everything is digitized. … I wanted to take that influence of living in between both worlds.”

The voting board named Taylor the first-place winner of the trashion show, followed by Shires-Freeman in second and Fordjour in third.

Taylor said the burden of thinking of the trashion show as a competition he had to win is a mentality he had to shed. “For me, when I looked at it that way, when I started this show in particular, it was too much on my shoulders. … It should be just a free, fluid way of designing.”

Taylor said his design was based on the structural armor of an armadillo, with “flowy pants” to contrast the structured, asymmetrical top.

Niemi said the Fashion Club provided a rubric for judges to utilize when deciding winners. “I’m so pleased that, as a judge, I got to use this because then you’re not guessing. … When we got the four of us [judges] talking, we had pretty much all agreed on exactly the same things and the order, so because [the rubric] was so well done, we knew how to focus the conversation.”

Zhang said, “We have students who are freshmen right now participating without a lot of experience, but they put so much time and effort to make everything happen. I think the most beautiful thing is they put in the effort despite finals and all the pressure they have. They still made time to do this, and that’s the best thing ever.”