Thank you Bend & Sponsors!

Posted on June 18, 2025 by Rubbish Renewed

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 Challenge **Designers:** *Lisa Mcluskie, DeeDee Johnson, Restore Employees Brian & Keegan* **Model:** *Lisa Mcluskie* **Photographer:** *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 support helped bring student designers from 17 Central Oregon schools 3^rd grade to college and adult designers new to fashion and those who have been with us since the beginning. Your support of 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!

With Gratitude, The Rubbish Renewed Team

How About that Diamond Runway by Flip Flop Sounds

Posted on December 30, 2023 by Rubbish Renewed

The first year at a new venue exploration and creativity reign. The second year you get to refine. We are thrilled to take what we learned from the 2023 revival of Rubbish Renewed and elevate it for the 2024 Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show. One thing we loved was Flip Flop Sounds diamond runway!

A few of us were gathered with Courtney (the mastermind behind Flip Flop Sounds) at a local watering hole chatting about the Pavilion as a venue, and Courtney started to sketch ideas. The ideas blew our minds, and the diamond runway was born!

The Flip Flop Sounds magic happening!

New Venue – The Pavilion!

Posted on February 20, 2023 by Rubbish Renewed

The cats out of the bag – Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show will transform the Bend Pavilion! A new chapter. A new wave.

Rubbish Renewed has made the rounds of event venues in Bend. Our first 3 years, starting in 2010, we celebrated at the Century Center. They provided the perfect venue – huge open space, an energizing vibe, and few rules. That was old Bend. In 2013, the Century Center indoor venue was divided and repurposed into small businesses. The huge space gone, Rubbish Renewed set out to find another home.

Bend is lacking in large, indoor, open event venues. After countless failures we finally procured the Armory Gym down near the Old Mill. The location was ideal, close for walking, and dedicated parking. The Gym atmosphere, however, was hard to transform, and the military systems challenging to negotiate.

In 2015 we moved again and made our home for 5 years by converting the Midtown Ballroom into a mesmerizing setting. Look forward to a post highlighting the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show, years 6-10.

After 2 years of pandemic closures, it’s time for a Rubbish Renewed Revival! A huge, diverse space, open to the environment, brings opportunities . . . the Pavilion!

We’re Back! Date Announced

Posted on January 20, 2023 by Rubbish Renewed

New Season . . . Spring . . . Saturday, May 20^th 2023!

The revival of Rubbish Renewed creates opportunities. One of these inspired a new season, Spring. Spring offers fresh venue ideas, novel designs, and more time for motivated student and adult designers to conceptualize and construct.

The design, creation, and application are a months-long process for designers to engage in and learn about waste, personal actions, design, creation skills, and determination, culminating in the professional feel of the show!

Just 4 months away. What will you create?

Save the Date: Saturday, May 20^th 2023! Submission deadline one month before

It’s Time to Listen – 2020 Student Gallery Posted

Posted on January 13, 2023 by Rubbish Renewed

Click here to access the 2020 Student Runway Gallery

We all know the impact of too much trash – Air pollution, climate change, soil and water contamination… but it’s easy to ignore when it’s whisked away from our homes each week and hidden from view of our daily lives.

Our student designers elevate these issues to the forefront of their creativity and learning, then take the mantle, using Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show as a platform, to inspire and educate the themselves and the rest of us. It’s time for us to listen!

Savor the inventiveness of these young artists’ fashion from our 2020 show through stunning images by SHE Photography’s Suzette Hibble and Jazmine Turner Photography’s Mindy J. Turner.

What to expect from a trash fashion show?!

Posted on December 18, 2017 by Rubbish Renewed

What to expect from a trash fashion show?!

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.

I am here to tell you it is! The tickets are now on sale and we expect to sell out just like in yeas past. Check out t his 1 minute video from our 2015 show to see for yourself!

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.

Tickets – www.rubbishrenewed.com

Rubbish Renewed made $20,000 for REALMS Magnet School!

Posted on January 26, 2017 by Rubbish Renewed

We packed the house with over 400 people at each of our two shows, raising just over $20,000 for REALMS’ distinctive education.

Thank you!!!

This year the show was elevated because of the quality and vision brought by 50 Central Oregon designers (24 of which were students from 10 local schools including Miller Elementary, Pine Ridge Elementary, Amity Creek, Bend High School, REALMS, Pacific Crest Middle School, Redmond Proficiency Academy, Cascades Academy, Mtn. View, and Summit High).

Given the weather and event postponement, we couldn’t have imagined the amount of support from the community with 25 Sponsors donating essential cash, beverages & services, 8 Business Challenge submission, 10 local vendors who also gave items to the silent auction, and additional other silent auction contributing businesses. Finally our 60+ dedicated volunteers from organizers, models, clean-up crew and everything in between

On behalf of the entire REALMS faculty, board of directors, and students, thank you again for your generosity and support.

Midtown Ballroom Roof :: ALL SNOW CLEARED OFF!

Posted on January 17, 2017 by Rubbish Renewed

2nd Grader; Bend La Pine School District

We wanted to give you an update on the snow removal at the Midtown Ballroom because we know you are wondering… Thank you to Jim Dickey and his hired crew who spent their day on Sunday clearing all of the snow off of the Midtown roof in preparation for our event.

We are excited to host our dress rehearsal at the Midtown Ballroom tonight and our show tomorrow night! We can’t wait to see you down there!!!

Tickets still available for both shows – buy tickets at the links below.

1st Show – 6pm // doors at 5pm

2nd Show – 8:30pm // doors at 7:30pm

Rubbish Renewed – ADJUSTED SHOW DATE – EVENT: January 18

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ADJUSTED SHOW DATE: Wednesday, January 18th (Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show Finalized)

Thank you for understanding our recent predicament! The postponement and date change for Rubbish Renewed were not taken lightly. Yesterday we made a tough decision to postpone the 7th annual Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show. Given the unpredictable nature of this storm and changing nature of events in town, we have had to change our date once again, after realizing a conflict at our venue. We apologize for the confusion.

We will host our Dress Rehearsal next Tuesday, January 17th at The Midtown Ballroom.

The event will be WEDNESDAY, January 18th. Show times will remain the same.

We have contacted our major vendors and found that our show will be able to go on stronger than ever next week at The Midtown Ballroom. We understand that you have had to put many structures in place to be a part of our event this week. We hope that this announcement affords you some relief and that we’ll be able to count on your participation next week too.
We can’t wait to see you at the show!

We walk our talk.

Posted on January 9, 2017 by Rubbish Renewed

In 2015, where we saw crowds of close to 800 people, we generated a 1/4 can of trash. Two of Rubbish Renewed organizers got into the bin at the end of the night, on top of the ONLY trash of the night, to prove it!

We educate, we inspire, and we walk our talk. From the beginning, hosting a large-scale event with little environmental impact has been a core part of our mission. How do we host a fundraising event with crowds of close to 1,000 people in the course of an evening and not generate a ton of trash? We consult the experts. ReThink Waste and Bend Garbage and Recycling are two sponsors who help us get as close as we can to zero waste. Bend Garbage and Recycling provide the bins and service, while ReThink Waste runs and trains the crowd at the event, helping them sort their waste accordingly.

As you can see from the photo above, we’ve been successful!

Rubbish Renewed continues to divert a ton of trash from the landfill. Last year, Rubbish Renewed achieved their 2015 goal and again only filled 1/4 can full of trash. This has been possible by supportive sponsors, socially conscious participants, and policies and structures (such as mandating compostable serving ware throughout the event) that ensure we continue to divert waste from the landfill, instead of contribute to it.

Now in 2017, where we will see crowds on Thursday night of well over 1,000 people, wait to see if we can fit all three organizers in the 35-gallon bin destined for the landfill.

View the full video from 2015 on our Facebook page.