“What do you get when a small group of visionary educators, artists, creators and environmentalists with a passion for the planet – and future generations – join forces with a mission to reimagine waste by creating couture with a conscience? You get Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show: a dazzling event where landfill-bound debris is transformed into jaw-dropping garments and designs. You get an event where creativity becomes a catalyst for change.” Read the complete in-depth article by Lynette Confer at Bend Lifestyle Magazine here!
GARDEN PARTY Designer: DeeDee Johnson Model: Robin Copper Engle Photo: Kimberly Teichrow
Once again, we pulled off this multifaceted, highly engaging, sustainably minded, community connecting event! The 13th Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show was enriched this year by more interactive sustainable thinking – art, activities, free design workshops, and a developed reusables system. These, in combination with the mesmerizing trash fashion show, raised the community impact of this even. Thank you sponsors, thank you Bend!We simply couldn’t have done it without you!
CREATURE OF FASHION – ReStore Business ChallengeDesigners: Lisa Mcluskie, DeeDee Johnson, Restore Employees Brian & KeeganModel: Lisa McluskiePhotographer:Joe Kline
Your support for creativity, the magical transformation of innovative materials, passion for our planet, and uplifting more than 700 people to find unique ways to think about waste, made the 2025 Rubbish Renewed the best fundraising and eco-elevating event in Bend!
Your supporthelped bring student designers from 17 Central Oregon schools 3rd grade to college and adult designers new to fashion and those who have been with us since the beginning. Your supportof diversity is what makes the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show matchless, engaging, and meaningful! And with your support we raised nearly $20,000 for REALMS Schools continuing the vision to foster scholarship, strengthen community, and inspire stewardship through active learning.
We feel so proud of the space and event we collectively created to celebrate and promote sustainability through the magic of trash fashion. It was a beautiful evening filled with hope, love, and community. Together we proved again, that Rubbish Renewed is not just a fashion show and not just a fundraiser, but a creative celebration of re-imagining waste, rethinking our relationship with trash, and inspiring people to live lighter on the planet. It is a testament to the power of people with aligned belief in a mission bigger than ourselves!
Mark your calendars for the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show May 10th, 2025
Bend’s coolest event celebrating sustainability, trash fashion, and local arts
Create and submit a garment
Support Local Schools
Rooted in a love of fashion, an appreciation of art and a passion for the planet, the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show fuses environmental responsibility, funky fashion and community.
Started in 2010 as a rogue fundraiser by a couple of teachers, it has turned into a Bend staple, a fashion-centered, sustainably run event that everyone in the community can enjoy.
The preparation and event encourage people to look at how much waste their lifestyles produce and inspires them to change habits that decrease their impact on the planet through small doable actions.
The Pavilion prepared for the start of the 2024 Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show
A friend reminded me today, after taking a minute (or a month) to breathe, we need to get back to work. Each of us can make a difference by focusing action at the community level, on local legislation, and talking to people meeting them where they are.
Today I begin by highlighting the incredible trash fashion crafted by local Central Oregon adults. Creating trash fashion to showcase at the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show each year is a commitment to educate, inspire, and bring to the forefront the impact individuals can make to help the environment.
Rubbish Renewed 2024 had a diverse team of photographers. Thanks again to Kimberly Teichrow Photography, Joe Kline Photography, and Melissa Barnes Dholakia for the incredible images you’ll find in our galleries.
Since 2006 Cosa Cura has created an atmosphere of sustainable style, creativity, local support, and community service. A perfect companion for the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show. This unique business has partnered with Rubbish Renewed since our humble beginnings and is back for the second year of Presenting Sponsor!
Cosa Cura showing off Rubbish Renewed Trash Fashion from the past!
I’m not much of a current clothes shopper. Mostly because of *The Dark Side of Fast Fashion, but that’s not Cosa Cura. It’s my go-to spot to support local artists and purchase unique clothing pieces that will last and compliment my style!
Cosa Cura at Brookswood Meadow Plaza
As of this Spring, Cosa Cura now offers 2 locations supporting local artists and fashionistas with a locale to sell their designs alongside stylish reused fashion. This unique shop now bookends Bend, with one location in Northwest Crossing and the newly opened 2nd shop in Brookswood Meadow Plaza in Southwest Bend. The Plaza itself is worth a visit with a neighborhood atmosphere with local shops, services, and restaurants. Check out Cosa Cura’s new airy space and support local sustainably-minded, and community-supportive businesses!
*The Dark Side of Fast Fashion – “It dries up water sources and pollutes rivers and streams, while 85% of all textiles go to dumps each year...”
With the Rubbish Renewed season coming spring, people around Central Oregon are looking at trash with a new eye. What is the essence of the material? How can I make something from nothing? What impact can I have on contributing to a more sustainable earth?
RPA students dug into a trash fashion during their January winter intensives. They explored unconventional, tossed-away materials, visioned and drew, then started to work their magic with different techniques.
Working with trash is hard and inspiring. Here’s a few of their thoughts:
Juno: “The work is a lot of trial and error.”
Trinity: “It helps grow my creativity”
Asher: “It’s fun and interesting taking trash and turning it into something cool. It’s cool seeing other people’s creativity and their works of art.”
We’re hoping to see some of these finished pieces on the runway! Time to start thinking about the submission process.
What will you create?
Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show Submission Deadline is Friday, April 5th for the May 11th event. Your garment does not have to be complete by the submission deadline, but the further along you are in the process, the more information the jury will have to make their decision.
THE REINCARNATION OF EARLY 20TH CENTURY WOOL COATS
My great uncle made braided rugs during the Great Depression and World War 2. Living in Roundup Montana, the winters were long and cold. He gathered worn out woolen coats and scraps from family and neighbors, and spent hours deconstructing garments, stripping fabric, and manipulating the newly formed strips into braids. This rubbish renewed process was normal during those lean times, making use of material that was finished from its original purpose, into something new and enduring. I grew up with Uncle Albert’s brightly colored, patterned rugs. One he made in later years still covers the floor of my childhood home, strong and seemingly unworn.
The rug that was in my aunt’s basement apartment, for as long as I remember, was an early version. When Betty passed, we discarded and distributed dozens of items. A few we kept. The rug, riddled with holes, was something to save for a later date. That time has arrived.
I transported the giant rug, weighing somewhere around 70lbs, back to Bend. Dragging it into my living room, like a body bag (luckily my partner was out of town), it was too big to unfold in my tiny Old Bend home. I left it in quarters and unlaced the braids, years of embedded debris falling free into the air and carpet (I donned a mask). Then the real work began.
I think unbraiding takes as long as braiding. The strands tangle and it’s necessary to cut out overly worn parts before separating the kinky quadra-folded strands into colors. The fabric unfolds in the process of washing each color group on the hand wash cycle in my front loader.
Now a ball of snarled fabric I untangle again, iron the lengths, and hang them to dry. The outside of the fabric is exceedingly worn even in areas without holes every inch. For now, I’ve rolled them up into spools by color and weight.
My next process is to cut the strands apart at the seams and remove those areas too perforated with holes. I’ll resew the bias cuts together with the insides now the face. My goal is to create a new coat, some parts re-braided and others sewn. I’ll keep you posted as my process continues on the reincarnation of an early 20th century wool coat.
Get inspired by the waste around you, and send us your material manipulation inspiration! What will you create for the May 20th, 2023 Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show!
Rubbish Renewed has developed into a showcase for talented community artists. Many designers submit year after year inspired to up their game in sustainability, material manipulation, and style each event. Pieces tell a variety of stories like the challenges of medical waste, excessive packaging from our mail order and coffee on-the-go obsessions, and how to transform discards into truly wearable art.
You’ve heard a lot about the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show, but you have never been. You think this is the year for you, and you will finally get out on a winter night in January to see what this fantastic event is all about. You wonder if it is worth the ticket price.
For each of the 2018 shows, you can expect to see 30+ garments on the runway made entirely of items destined to the landfill or items re-used in a stylistic fashion.
Scrolling through the years of Rubbish Renewed blog posts last night, I stumbled across Virtual Inspiration I posted on September 30, 2013. I read, “The last few evenings after work I’ve been down in my sewing cavern, a mug of hot tea on the shelf, an audio book playing in the background, my Pinterest “boards” open, exploring materials, shapes, color and design. Getting inspired.” . . . What? History repeating itself! OK, instead of tea and an audio book, I had a glass of wine and season 4 of Downton Abbey playing, but the rest was the same. I’m just as content now, my creative spirit ignited, surrounded by the unusual textures, colors, and shapes inherent in the refuse I choose.
What are you creating? Submission deadline Friday December 8th, just one month away! Link to the Runway Application.
100,000+ images from my father’s documentation of Native Arts of the Northwest, Plains and Plateau, now digitized.
Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show 