Excitement is building for the The Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show Business Challenge competition just 1 day away! 8 businesses dedicated to sustainable practices, are coming together to celebrate sustainability, support Realms education, and compete for the Coveted Trash Trophy!
Years of passing on the Coveted Trash Trophy, like the Stanley Cup, is over. New this year is the laminate version, ready for the winning Business to keep!
Back for the competition areReStore, who have competed in every Business Challenge! Lonza, for their 3rd Business Challenge, and Gear Fix, coming back for a 3rd after a many year pause!
Devon Lizza discovered the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show through her mom’s friend’s daughter, when she was a high school student at Bend High, and never looked back! Now, a second-year student in the architecture program at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Devon has designed another spectacular piece transforming trash into an eye dazzling color experience!
What inspires your creations?
2019 Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion ShowMaterials: K-cups, plastic Bags, old bike tire
2018 Gum Wrappers
I have to say color. I think that color is just an inspiration in itself as it’s the one true way to bring life to something. When I start looking at garbage it’s always the color I am drawn to first followed by how to alter it into something unrecognizable. This sorta flows into the process for me as I want the end look to be nothing like what it’s made out of. I’ve designed with gum wrappers, chocolate wrappers, and kediri cups in the past and I always know I’ve done it right when people continually ask me “what on earth is this made of”.
How do you connect to the Rubbish Renewed mission – transforming trash and inspiring community for a sustainable earth?
Being a lifelong Oregonian and a student at UO with a sustainably focused architecture program, it goes to show I love this event for more than just the sheer ingenuity it spurs but also the mission and message behind it. I believe in sustainability being the future of the world’s success and that people can contribute to this themselves. I myself am a vegetarian and an avid thrifter, one because I love the things and secondly after I found out that those two things are single handedly the most environmentally positive impactful an individual person can do.
What is one thing you want to share with aspiring trash fashion designers?
Materials for this years creation!
My advice to aspiring designers is to just keep things interesting and design trashion garments with things you would least expect. Sometimes I have a little game in my head walking around that I challenge myself to imagine what type of clothes can be made from whatever odd trinkets and garbage I see. Keep people guessing what things are made of and ALWAYS keep a lookout for some color.
Come see Devon’s newest creation along with 45 other incredible garments created by student and adult community designers at the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show, on May 20th at the Pavilion!
Your garment doesn’t have to be complete to submit, but the further along you are, the easier it is for the jury to recognize your vision in your photos and artist renderings.
The Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show garment submission deadline is one month away! Designers, now is the time to start fabricating that unique creation you’ve been pondering. You may be still collecting trash, but get started!
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3 EASY STEPS to be considered for the 11th Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show on Saturday, May 20th…
Complete the submission process by the deadline << April 20th >>
Mission – Is your garment furthering the Rubbish Renewed Mission? Does the description of your garment and piece communicate: Transforming trash, inspiring community for a sustainable earth
Materials – Does your garment fit the trash fashionand/or re-fashion definitions? Does your garment transform trash into fashion? Priority given to garments that truly keep items out of the landfill.
Design – Does your garment communicate a coherence in design, an innovative technique, unique aesthetics, and creative expression?
Construction – Do you demonstrate quality in construction? Does your construction quality inspire long-term use?
Your garment doesn’t have to be complete to submit, but the further along you are, the easier it is for the jury to recognize your vision in your photos and artist renderings.
It’s that time of year in the Rubbish Renewed calendar to get inspired to design and construct! Rubbish Renewed is calling all creatives to find the inherent beauty in the trash around you. Delve into its unique characteristics: Is it stiff? Does it flow? Does it create volume on its own? How can it be attached? Discover the essence of the material and see the form emerge.
Things that are stiff and can create and maintain shape:
Things that are soft and can be sewn or woven:
Things that are small and can be cut up and tied, tacked, or glued:
Things that are small that can be rolled into beads or used whole and tied together:
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!
As individual community members we have a responsibility to think about our choices and take actions to minimize our impact on the earth, but it is exponentially important for businesses to do the same. Poor waste management contributes to climate change, air pollution, and directly affects ecosystems and species. Reducing the carbon footprint of their products, creating initiatives to help employees reduce their impact, producing a climate conscious workplace, are all ways that businesses can step up their sustainability.
That’s why we love the Rubbish Renewed Business Challenge! We get to highlight the sustainable work of local businesses who take their impact seriously.
Each year a group of businesses come together to celebrate sustainability, support Realms education, and compete for the Coveted Trash Trophy.
Celebrate the 2020 Business Challenge Runway participants through the captivating photos of Jazmine Turner Photography’s Mindy J. Turner and SHE Photography’s Suzette Hibble!
New Season . . . Spring . . . Saturday, May 20th 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 20th 2023!Submission deadline one month before
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.
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!
Photo: SHE Photography
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.
Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show 