The students at Cañada College in Redwood City staged their first-ever fashion show on Tuesday, celebrating Earth Day with style and sustainability.
The show was organized by the college’s Fashion Design and Merchandising Department and coordinated by department head Jaleh Naasz. The event featured original designs created by students using environmentally conscious practices, Naasz said.
About 30 students created 50 looks for the show. Some walked the runway in their own designs, while others had fellow students volunteer as models.
According to Naasz, students used various recycled and donated materials to create their garments, with sustainability as a central theme. Much of the fabric came from the program’s donation library, which includes textiles and sewing supplies donated by community members and alumni. Students were also encouraged to source materials from thrift stores.
Naasz said she was taken aback by the quality of construction and meticulousness she saw in her students’ work when she joined the college as a faculty member last year. She wanted to organize an event where students could showcase their work outside the classroom while raising awareness about the environmental damage caused by the fashion industry and encouraging sustainable alternatives.
“So if we’re going to do a fashion show, it needs to have a purpose and a meaning, and it needs to do some good, essentially,” Naasz said.
An article by Princeton University reported that approximately 20% of the world’s wastewater is produced by the fashion industry. According to the U.N. Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, the clothing and textile industry is responsible for 2% to 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions and contributes $2.4 trillion to global manufacturing.
Lakeisha Webb, a student for two and a half years, created a bomber jacket and a pair of pants from used denim. She posted a message in her neighborhood group asking people to donate their old jeans.
“Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s not fashionable,” Webb said. “Just because it would have been discarded doesn’t mean it can’t have a new life.”
Webb said fast fashion has significantly increased consumer consumption, with people “buying new outfits over and over and over again.” She believes buying clothes made from used fabrics and investing in higher-quality garments that last longer can help reduce the volume of clothing that ends up in landfills and does not decompose easily.
Jennifer Moya, another student at the college, designed a long dress and a jacket for the show.
For the jacket, she used fabric donated by the college, including a cotton-linen blend and silk for the lining. Her dress incorporated 100% silk and sateen, the latter of which she had previously received as a donation and saved for future use.
“That fabric could have ended up in the landfill, and it didn’t, because I created something with it,” Moya said. “So it is satisfying to empower myself to do things like that and make things different in society.”
Setareh Noviscky, who serves on the Cañada College Fashion Advisory Board, criticized the rise of fast fashion brands for producing excessive waste and low-quality garments that contribute to global pollution. She helped style some of the looks for the fashion show and described sustainable fashion as wearable art that values quality, longevity and intention.
“As a lover of fashion, when I see something that is just constructed so cheaply and it’s not meant to last, that was never the intent of fashion,” Noviscky said.
Webb and Moya acknowledged that working with donated fabrics can pose challenges, such as stains, holes or insufficient material. However, they said creative solutions, like using stained fabric as lining or using the color blocking technique to combine smaller fabric pieces, can help overcome these issues and reduce the fashion industry’s carbon footprint.
