I’m so excited to finally post another gallery from the 2016 Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show. The 2016 Adult Runway gallery has a slightly different look. Each designer’s garment features 3 photos from Heaven McCarthur’s story telling style. Many of the mosaics include a close-up of the materials and fabrication methods, something that usually only those in the green room get to see. Look for the 2016 Business Challenge Gallery in the next few days!
The deadline for designer applications is just 4 weeks away! Get inspired by perusing the 2016 student runway gallery with photos by Heaven McArthur. Many of these students are first time designers, while others are seasoned veterans with multiple entrees over our Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show history.
Designs by students are often the most fresh and innovative as they see the world differently than their older counterparts. For more student inspiration, link to the blog posts and galleries below from previous years. Then, let the creativity soak in and get started designing!
Behind the Scenes Designer Series: Artist 5 Olivia Barnes
2016 Student Garment Sneak Peak: Gallery
2015 Student Runway Gallery Posted!
RR Student Designers in Action
Student Designers at the Heart of Rubbish Renewed – 2014 Student Gallery Posted!
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.
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.Friends, acquaintances, and at times strangers often remind me, that the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show is their favorite event of the year. People of all ages love the energy, art, and message of the evening. However, many of those same people don’t realize that Rubbish Renewed is a fundraising event for REALMS Magnet School and supports the unique programing that makes REALMS a place where rigor, relevance, and relationships intersect.
Put the Needle on the Record
Designer: Mayra Stearns
Corporate Meeting on the Rocks
Designer: Karen Holm
Natural Edge Furniture
Designer: Kassy Windus
Mt. Bachelor
Snowstorm Diva
The Ventilator Designer: MAURICE
ReStore Sublimity
Playing it Safe
Designer: Kelly Powell
4 weeks before garments need to be runway ready, on December 17th, a small group of designers, models and Rubbish Renewed volunteers gathered at Tambi Lane Photography for our pre-show photo shoot. Photographs are focused on Business Challenge participants, garments being donated to our live fundraising auction, and student garments (completed garments enter a lottery for the final few spaces). The end result is to present you with a sneak peak of the richness to come. We couldn’t create this professional shoot without the wonderfully talented Bishops Barbershop’s masterful hair, and Mayra Stearn & Arenal Hruby makeup magic! Tambi Lane Photography not only contributes the sweet space, but once again, Tambi made the garments come alive in a fun and supportive atmosphere.
Fruity Tutui
Designer/Model: Fiona Wright
Material: fruit bags and netting, potato sacks, newspaper bags, flour sacks
Mt. Bachelor
Designers: Andria Zippler, Denise Ellington, Sam Whitman, Stephanie Kirpach, Martha Jeffers
Materials: old Mt.Bachelor trail map (wings), old banner that says, “snow”, etc
Put the Needle on the Record
Designer: Mayra Stearns
Materials: records, doilies, linens and sheet music
First show showcases Student Garments, Business Challenge, and our Live Auction Items. Second show is 21 and over and highlights Adult Garments, Business Challenge, and our Live Auction Items.
Designer: Bend Community Materials: tin can lids, 1950’s stained curtains
Looking at trash facts is mind-boggling. Each year at this time I peruse the internet for waste data to share with the Bend community. The goal is to reignite sustainable practices in ALL of us. For me, complacency sets in as the year rolls on. When I reconsider a pledge each year I’m empowered to act, focusing my sustainability efforts.
The first year of Rubbish Renewed I pledged to recycle the toilet paper tube. And since then, I have diligently complied. The next year, I upped my composting efforts through making a pledge. To this day, I still meet this goal.
There is something about the act of making a pledge and watching it publicly displayed walking down the runway that motivates; it helps hold me accountable. This year I’m using a thermos to capture the extra water I heat for tea. Now, in winter, as the day wears on, I rejuvenate my hot beverage with captured energy. I’ll make a pledge today at Rescue Collective (our hosts for the Rubbish Renewed Community Garment creation) to change a habit and lower my impact on the planet!
Designer: The Bend Community
Materials: Bicycle Tubes, scrap plether
The Rubbish Renewed Community Garment offers a place to take a personal step towards walking more lightly on the planet. What will you do to generate less waste? Consume less? Ask yourself, “What one action can I take to lower my impact on the planet?” Make a pledge. Start today.
You can help create the 2015/16 Community Garment at the Rubbish Renewed table at December’s First Friday (December 4th) at Rescue Collective, (910 NW Harriman St Suite 150).
Today we bring back our Behind the Scene Designer Series we started last season, and this time it’s a talented 12 year old! I first met Olivia at the December photo shoot before our 2014 Show. Then a focused 5th grader she came to us dialed as a designer and poised to show her talent on the runway. Last year I lamented that Olivia didn’t submit, until I found out she was already working on her piece for the following year! Talk about a role model for planning ahead!
The Behind the Scene Designer Series celebrates the trash fashion that IS the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show. Without it, there would be no event. Each designer brings his or her unique passion, inspiration, and creativity, but no matter their differences, a common bond lingers: transforming trash, inspiring community for a sustainable earth.
Designer & Model: Olivia Barnes
Materials: Bicycle refuse
Photo: Tambi Lane Photography
RR: What do you do in real life when you’re not designing and creating trash fashion?
OB: Fencing, school (7th grader), and cupcake baking
RR: How did you get started as a trash fashion designer?
OB: I studied all of the water around the world in elementary school and I got inspired to do something about it.
RR: What inspires your creations?
OB: I was inspired by my dads biking and I realized that there was a lot of things that were wasted. There were broken parts that just got thrown away. I decided to make something amazing out of that.
RR: What is your current goal as a Trash Fashion Designer?
OB: My next step is to enter the fashion show this year, and end goal is to inspire, and make known the problems about trash.
RR: What is else should we know about you?
OB: I love to design, model and help the environment. I love the feeling of showing people what I have made that I spent time on, and it definitely pays off. I also love to get creative with trash and help put better use to the garbage around the world!
T-Time
Designer & Model: Lily McNabb
Materials: Tea bag wrappers
Inspiring students rewards all of us. As a teacher, seeing students create a goal, persevere through challenges and meet that goal, is the best. And when that goal includes taking care of the planet, it’s even better. I’ve had a chance to teach, mentor, assist, problem solve, and push students each year to enter in the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show. Many life skills come out of this experience and the 2015 Gallery shares the fruits of this labor. Thanks for all the determination, resilience, and follow-through shown by these student designers. We can’t wait to see what they bring this year.
RESTORE Business Challenge
More than 6 years ago, when we first envisioned the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show, we hoped to create a fun, fashionable event that inspired our Bend community to raise the bar in environmental responsibility. Our mission declares we are rooted in a love of fashion, an appreciation of art and a passion for the planet. Trash fashion created the visible inspiration; it just wasn’t enough. We wanted people to not only believe that being sustainable was a good idea, but in-fact act. It meant we, as an event, needed to walk our talk. We had to hold the bar high for ourselves, designers, sponsoring businesses, food carts and audience members to keep sustainability at the forefront for the event.
In 2015 we saw just under 1000 people in our 2 January 15th shows. This photo celebrates ALL the trash from the night! Everything else was reused, recycled, or composted.
Thank you Bend for rising to the challenge, keeping a passion for the planet front and center!
Rubbish Renewed is a community event. It is powerful for students, embraced by the community, and is rooted in a belief that each person can make a difference in our environment by just making one small shift at a time.
