Sketch to Stage: NAU Eco Fashion Show

When I first signed up to compete in my university's eco fashion show, I had no idea what I was about to get myself into. Little did I know that the next few months would be filled with sleepless nights, glue gun burns, and shards of aluminum in every square inch of my room.

The challenge was easier said than done; create a piece with a $5 budget that is at least 75% recycled material.

My first thought was to use the unexpected, so I chose to work with aluminum, as I noticed so many of my competitors used easily manipulated materials such as paper and cardboard. The main issue I knew I would face with this material would be not slicing my model to bits with the sharp edges as she wore whatever I was going to make. I figured that bending the edges would make them more blunt and less prone to hurting people. With this concept in mind, I drew out my initial sketch.

This was my debut as a designer, so I thought, "What the hell? Go big or go home." and sketched a gown. I decided to make individual pieces of the aluminum and create almost a "scale" texture for the bodice and later came up with the idea of shredding plastic bags to create a skirt. My goal here was to make her look like a queen on Game of Thrones and not a walking recycling bin.

Let me first address the scales. I made them by cutting out the thin center from soda cans and flipping it to its reverse side in order to achieve a nice homogenous silver color, no matter the type of can I used. In concept, they seemed like a wonderful idea. In reality, however, they became my biggest nightmare. I vastly underestimated the amount of aluminum needed to cover the entire bodice and was frantically collecting cans up until a week before the show. Cutting the pieces was also a process, and I was often up until the early hours of the morning cutting and folding. One other thing that I didn't think about, was the waste from said aluminum cutting. Before I knew it, my room was filled with tiny aluminum shards that were very (and I mean very) pointy. I tried vacuuming a couple of times, but after a while I realized that there was no point as the mess would soon reappear as I worked. For months I was constantly stabbing my feet on tiny metal pieces and I couldn't really walk around my room without wearing shoes.

Assembling the scales was a much easier task. They were glued onto a base (made from an old t-shirt) in an overlapping pattern. I really liked the effect. It made a great texture and I was really pleased with the final result

 To create the fringe at the bottom, I simply cut out the white parts of plastic bags, stretched them to change the texture, and glued them to the bottom of the bodice. This wasn't as difficult as cutting the aluminum, but it definitely became time consuming. To extend length in some areas, I had to melt the plastic with the glue gun in order to get different pieces to stick together in the most seamless way.

Despite the time consuming nature of the project, I was able to have it finished in time for the show. One of the biggest tasks the day of was getting the top to stay up, since it was so heavy due to the fact it was made of metal. But with some help from friends, we were able to make it work.














Needless to say, it walked beautifully.

And the judges agreed too, as we won best original design!



I'm so incredibly proud of what I created, but I could not have done it without some help from my friends. Special thanks to:

Jessica, for modeling
Alina, for emotional support and assisting
Nicholas, for helping backstage

Other pictures (as well as some used on this post) can be seen on NAU's Eco Fashion page here.

4Flag TV Video Coverage
NAU Official Eco Fashion Show Website