Kids inspire me.  With Trash Fashion on my back burner for months, it took the beginning of the school year with a slew of excited middle school students to get my mind spinning with ideas.  For the first post of the Rubbish Renewed season, here is an encouraging account written by several of last fall’s REALMS Rubbish Renewed Elective students. Several fantastic photos, by Heaven McArthur, highlight garments made by students quoted below, and Joe Kline’s ghostly image of the community garment.

Designers: Ella Cook & Scout Gesuale; Model: Matea Gesuale

RIMROCK TIBET Designer/Model: Becky Knight Materials: Discarded “Community/Prayer” Flags School: REALMS

THE SEASONS Designer/Models: Maggie Pierce – Fall & Tatum Huegal – Winter Materials: Fall – used packing paper, discarded cloth napkins; Winter – Tin foil, discarded curtains, pipe cleaners, scrap fabric

This year the Rubbish Renewed Elective at REALMS was a hectic blur of measurements, cutting, restarting, redoing, sketching, and stitching. All of us, in the elective, had the goal of making it to the runway. Finally, after hours of work and thought poured into every garment, the deadline for submissions had arrived. That day, everyone was fussing over this or that trying to find the perfect name and description for their garment. Even now that everyone’s submissions were in, the suspense wasn’t over. We waited and waited for the results to come by email on the 12th of December. After days of anticipation the wait was over, whether your submission made it or not we still had work to do. The community garment had yet to be started. Those whose submissions had made it in continued to mess with their designs until it was just right. Others worked and worked on the community garment featuring old calculators from the 6th grade math room.  All of the students in Rubbish Renewed had a delightful experience and are planning on making more trash fashion next year. Here are some comments that our students had:

• “Waiting backstage was delightfully nerve wracking,” said student model and designer Becky Knight.
• Ella Cook realized that anything can be reused to make something new. “I learned that almost everything that someone throws away can be used for something else.”
• This year a group of REALMS students had the idea of creating outfits with a theme of the 4 seasons. They worked together to create some fabulous outfits. Lilah Beck,student designer and model of spring said, “I am most proud of the bond that I formed with my team. We helped each other make the garments come together to be the best they can be.” Another student designer and model, Violet Loftus of summer stated, “I used to think that trash was gross and that it should be thrown right into the trash but then I went to the show!”
• Jaide Summers noticed that “It makes you aware of what to throw away and what to repurpose.”

Look for Galleries from last year’s show coming soon!