This High School Is Tackling Clothing Donation Waste in Ways Most Fashion Brands Won't
Tony Tan
Days after New York Fashion Week wrapped up, another fashion show commenced – but instead of focusing on new collections this was making about clothing donation and waste. Sage Hill School’s 3rd Annual Reimagined Fashion Show, was all about upcyling and waste reduction. Reimagined, a student-led club focusing on sustainable fashion, works to breathe new life into old clothing while igniting change one garment at a time.
The timing of this year's show did not escape founder and co-president Anna Yang. “We young people can make change too,” she tells Teen Vogue. “Maybe you guys aren't doing it right…maybe this is the reimagined version of what fashion week should look like.”
Yang, a student at Sage Hill School in Newport Beach, California, created Reimagined when she was just 15-years-old. She had spent a summer at a fashion camp at Parsons School of Design, where she first learned about upcycling and the importance of sustainability in the fashion industry. After she returned home, she embarked on a back-to-school closet cleanout. “I was facing a pile of clothes that I'd outgrown,” she says. “It almost resembled a landfill.” Yang didn’t want to contribute to the fashion waste she had just learned about, so she decided to take her new sewing skills and apply them to the pile of clothes in front of her. After using materials she had around her house to change the fate of an old tee shirt, Reimagined Club began to take shape.
The club welcomes everyone with any experience. Co-president Lauren Stoney didn’t know how to sew when she joined as a freshman, so she began by painting pieces. This year, she is wearing her own pieces down the runway and helping lead the club in upcycling over 650 gallons of discarded clothing.
“We want to showcase the humanity within an industry that is increasingly washed out by microtrends, excessive waste, and exploitative production. Not only does fast fashion lead to a loss of cultural and individual identity, it erases the souls that make our clothes,” Stoney shared at the fashion show. “Reimagined puts the heartbeats back into fashion.”
Reimagined, Yang says, focuses on “inclusivity” and “collaboration,” two things the fashion industry needs. The club encompasses many aspects, from fashion to art to social justice, making the club an accessible environment for any student who is interested. “Just seeing it grow from myself to what it is now, to a group of friends, to then a group of club members, to now a whole organization and a movement, it feels like I'm sharing a piece of my heart with everybody,” Yang tells Teen Vogue.
When Mei Mahon started getting more involved with the creative aspects of reimagined, she realized what a “labor of love” the project is. She recalled one night, late in the evening, Yang drove to her house and dropped off a pile of clothes from the thrift store. Seeing how much other members cared about their mission, Mahon says she realized the project extends “past fashion” and is about a passion for the environment and helping other people and their community. “There was something so electrifying about 300 people all under one roof sharing the same purpose and believing the same advocacy,” Mahon tells Teen Vogue of the show.
This year's show, “Threads of Love,” captures fashion inspired by major fashion capitals: New York, Paris, London, Tokyo and Los Angeles. “Our initial idea was to talk about culture and to highlight culture that seems increasingly forgotten or washed out within the industry,” Yang tells Teen Vogue. Fast fashion has contributed to a “loss of identity” and “loss of culture” in fashion that Yang wanted to revisit in the show. “I feel like people are forgetting about the artistry that's behind this industry,” she says.
To create the pieces featured in the show, students involved with Reimagined host a clothing donation drive at the beginning of the school year, where community members can drop off clothes that otherwise may have ended in the trash. Students put in countless hours at Reimagined workshops, learning from one another and using all sorts of materials and skills to transform the pieces. After showcasing the upcycled clothes during the annual fashion show, they bring them to trading posts to share with the broader Los Angeles community. All the profits made go directly to Remake World, a nonprofit working to address fashion’s impact on climate and social justice issues. The Reimagined team hopes their contributions to Remake World, and other anti-fast-fashion organizations, will help better the lives of those exploited by the fashion industry.
This year's show comes as Los Angeles residents cope with the devastating impacts of California wildfires. The fires have left many without homes throughout the area. Reimagined sought ways they could support their community while staying true to their mission of sustainability. The students were originally going to host a clothing drive, but after talking to those impacted, they decided to use the show as an opportunity to ask for monetary donations and share information about the impact of the fires.
“People are taking this as a chance to dump whatever they have from their closets to people,” Yang tells Teen Vogue, explaining that Los Angeles has actually been inundated with clothing donations, though much of it is unwearable. “You shouldn't donate things that you don't want to wear to other people, especially in a time of crisis.”
When Reimagined put on their first fashion show, Yang recalls that most people didn’t really seem to care. This year, over 200 people came out on a Friday afternoon for the show. Prior to the show, Yang was most excited to share the club’s “unwavering” belief in seeing “beauty in even the most unlikely.” Given the recent fires and current political climate, Reimagined leaders are excited to share their optimism with everybody in attendance.
“From fashion waste to natural disasters, we really want to use this show to highlight the interconnectedness of climate issues and why we need to look out for both sustainability and our community,” Yang says.
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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