Recycling has never looked so good.
Tread Lightly hosted its third annual Trashion Fashion event on Tuesday at The Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts on Tuesday.
Tread Lightly aims to encourage environmental friendliness across campus by participating in Recyclemania and bringing speakers to campus. The club is also responsible for the bi-weekly Toilet Talk posters in restrooms around campus.
The timing of this event served as both a celebration of Earth Day and a closing to Recyclemania—Tread Lightly’s month-long effort to encourage on-campus recycling over the month of March.
For the Trashion Fashion event, both Bonaventure and local high school students designed men and women’s fashion made out of trash. All designs featured in the show were made of at least 90 percent post-consumer materials. Students could not purchase any of the materials for the event, said Sean Conklin, host and assistant curator for The Quick Center.
Some models featured comical looks, such as Zoolander’s signature style, while others featured dramatic looks, such as a Peter Pan-inspired outfit.
“The outfit I wore consisted of three different types of black garbage bags, which made up a Maleficent-style dress and cape,” freshman journalism and mass communication major and model Taylor Walker said. “There were three green daisies pinned to the garbage bags with embellishments along the front of the dress. The final touch was my headpiece made out of two cardboard party hats and black foam.”
While Walker said she modeled a more simplistic look, other models walked the runway in elaborately designed gowns.
“My dress was made out of fabric material, resembling a plastic table cloth with gold tape to hold it together,” freshman undecided science major and model Asia Williams said. “The shoulder and neckpieces were made from black recycled cup holders and cartons. Then the bottoms were spray painted gold.”
Although the designers knew every material of which their creations consisted, some students said it was hard to tell these looks apart from actual runway gowns.
“From a distance, the winner’s ensemble looked like a ‘night-out’ look,” freshman psychology major Lexi Jennings said. “As the model came closer to the end of the stage, I could see that her skirt was made out of bottle caps and duct tape—it flowed very nicely.”
Josh Maxey, Lauren Zazzara and Anne Mormile judged the show. At the end, four models took home awards for their efforts. Williams was named “Trashionista,” while junior theatre and journalism and mass communication major Chernice Miller won “Top Trashionista.” Sophomore English and journalism and mass communication major David Bryant won “Top Model Runner Up,” while junior finance major Naudia Saroyan-Dunn won “Top Model.”
Aside from their dedication to fashion, many of the designers feel passionate about going green as well.
“I’m really big into recycling and repurposing,” junior strategic communication and digital media major and designer Tristan King said. “I sign petitions all the time, either to stop oil spills or water pollution. My internship is with an organization called Public Herald, where they fight against the injustice of fracking. I’m subscribed to various organizations, like One Percent for the Planet with Patagonia.”
While this event served as an artistic endeavor, Tread Lightly said it hopes that these productions encourage students to reduce, reuse and recycle.
mcgurllt14@bonaventure.edu
