Keep Austin Beautiful Fashion Show

Austin Museum of Art ·  August 15, 2010

It turns out trash was trendier than we thought and tickets SOLD OUT to this innovative fashion show weeks in advance.  Austin’s top designers turned trash into trends, raised environmental awareness, and left guests talking for weeks to come. Inspired by the Austin Museum of Art’s current exhibit of Chris Jordan's photographs related to consumption and environmental issues; attendees saw local designers’ work that transforms trash into wearable works of art! 

CLICK HERE to see a video of this exciting event.

Photos of the show by Andrew Sterling of Sterling Images. 

Getting Ready for Show Time

SHOW TIME

Laisa Macias and Anne Marie Beard

Inspired by modern lines in architecture, art, furniture, and fashion, Laisa Macias created her looks from materials like popped bicycle inner tubes, vertical blinds, packing foam and up-cycled garments from the thrift store. The discarded materials were transformed from old and used to soft and beautiful in the form of fun, flirty dresses, a modern power suit and a cute romper.  Anne Marie Beard provided the accessories for each of these looks.  Her handbags were made from the scrap materials from each of Laisa’s designs.

Laisa would like to thank Toni and Guy at Barton Creek Mall for their hair & make-up services.

Kari Perkins

Kari Perkins is a costume designer who created this series of dresses to draw attention to the dysfunctional and unsustainable relationship between human kind and petroleum hydrocarbons.  Petroleum is not just energy, it is also packaging. All of Kari’s pieces are entirely created from recycled petroleum products and she believes that unless there is a growing demand for ball gowns made of trash, we must all do our part to reduce our consumption of petroleum, including packaging materials.

• “Consumption” is a strapless ball gown and headpiece made from trash and chip bags.
• “Gyre” is a ball gown made from 6-pack plastic rings, bread bag fasteners, and construction packing materials.
• “Petromatromony” is a wedding gown made from crocheted and interconnected plastic shopping bags.

Marissa Cantu

Marissa Cantu is an 18 year old artist and recent high school graduate.  She enjoys drawing, doing artwork on nails and creating crazy sculptures made from human hair.  She recently participated in the Advanced Young Artist’s program at the Arthouse and has already received much recognition for her art, including a 1st place prize at the 2010 Visual Arts Scholastic Event.  Marissa made this dress from upcycled thrift store clothes and Kool-aid “Jammers” drink packaging.

Chia Guillory

Chia loves working with vintage fabrics & unusual materials to create elegant, timeless clothing. She has been voted 'best clothing designer' in the Austin Chronicle readers' poll the last four years straight.  Chia makes art in the form of fashion- everything from her famous faux fur hats and custom couture pieces to costumes and dance-wear. And she also makes art from found object sculptures to figure studies on paper and canvas. Her looks were created from items like a worn out car cover, oyster shells, recycled leather and food packaging items like coffee and chip bags.

Shauna Smith /SS Pirate Jenny

SS Pirate Jenny is a line of couture upcycled and custom designed clothing and accessories by Shauna MaRee Smith.  It reflects the spirit of the classic song Pirate Jenny where the overlooked becomes the force to be reckoned with.

Her collection is made from old sweatshirts and t-shirts, broken bags and belts, discarded denim and unwanted sheets.  The process of changing the seams and the style lines from one piece of clothing to another takes an abundance of skill, patience, creativity and time.   But what makes the outcome beautiful is an event like this where we are challenged to recognize our consumption and waste.   SS Pirate Jenny thanks Tina Sparkles for helping to make this happen, and also thanks Susan and Kelly for the unflappable motivation and invaluable assistance and to Chenoh from Black Orchid who gave her time freely to Keep Austin Beautiful. 

Tina Sparkles

Tina Sparkles is a creative activist, pro-am fashion designer and freelance fashion sewing instructor.  She stopped buying new clothes in 2005 because she wanted to stop contributing to the cycle of mass production and its effects on people and the environment. She has a book coming out in a couple weeks called Little Green Dresses which is all about taking DIY fashion to the max with a special focus on refashioning fresh new items from already existing materials. Tina teaches fashion sewing classes at The Stitch Lab on S. 1st St. and also heads up the fashion program at The Griffin School, a local private high school.

• “Systems Supernova” was made with recycled computer wiring, a thrift store curtain and electrical tape.
•  “64 Shades of Black” was made using 64 pieces of clothing from Goodwill’s Blue Hanger location.  On average, Americans purchase 64 pieces of new clothing per year.
• “One Sip at a Time” was made using 200 recycled drinking straws and a thrift store dress.

Tina wishes to thank Jeni Hoover and Maris Calderone at Pearl Studio for their hair and make-up services.

Antoinette Perez

Designer Antoinette Perez found lingering inspiration in photographer Chris Jordan's work with the question, "When do we really have enough?"  By turning her attention to trends overdone in recent years, Antoinette chose to work with the glut of clothing hanging in thrift stores to highlight that, often, "enough" is really too much.  Most of the raw materials are sourced from 100% cotton khaki pants and 100% cotton black denim jeans.

Rene Geneva

René Geneva was the winner of "Best Designer Critics Choice" and "Best Women's Designer" at Austin Fashion Week last year.  This year marks the 13th anniversary of René Geneva Design's eco-friendly clothing.  Her fashions have been seen from the runways of Mercedes Benz Fashion Week to the floors of Whole Foods and she's just as comfortable in the jungle working with villages as she is impersonating a fashionista.  You couldn't have missed the solar parasol outside and living dress, also made by Rene.  Today you'll see a bridal gown made from recycled paper lanterns, fashions made from hemp and recycled PET plastic bottles, as well as a special outfit made by her student, Maddy, at the Dougherty Art Center's Fashion Camp.

Thanks to Ana Castro, Alisha Tanella and Kandy Glass for hair and make-up services.

Anslee Connell of SavannahRed and Cathie Hutchins of Austin Yarn Company

Designer Anslee Connell began her clothing label SavannahRed just under a year ago. Her pieces strive to empower the fuller figured woman with curvy couture that is playful, sexy, and perhaps unexpected, all the while aiming to keep a heart of eco-consciousness at the core of her design.

Cathie Hutchins started Austin Yarn Company in 2007 after winning the

Texas Next Top Design: Eco Style award. Her usual medium is a signature felt that she knits, boils, and then uses for her unique handbag designs. She continues to keep her focus on handbags but has branched out this Fall with a pillow collection called AYC Home. At SXSW 2011, Cathie is preparing to launch a musical instrument soft case line called AYC Rocks.

Anslee and Cathie teamed up to create head to toe pieces in a collection called "Recycled Curvy Barbie." For each outfit, the models are considered to be vintage, plus-size Barbie dolls who have been "thrown away and reclaimed".

• "Paper Housewife" is a paper mache dress complete with decoupaged shoes and recycled paper and cardboard accessories
• "Summertime Soda Pop Shop" dress is made from vinyl signage, plastic shopping bags, and plastic Vidalia sweet onion bags. Her shoes, manufactured by Melissa Shoes, are made of 100% recyclable plastic and other materials. Handbag and accessories were constructed from UPS brown bubble shipping packs and guitar picks.
• “Grown Up” is a dress made from scrap copper sheeting.  The accessories were made with a 21 tooth bicycle cog, antique brass chain, aluminum and copper foil, a seat belt closure, guitar strings, aluminum tubing and a duct tape roll.
• "Playtime is Funtime" is a dress made from a thrifted, animal-friendly duvet cover and a vintage zipper. Accessories were made from thrift, vintage and scrap fabrics and felt.

Greater Austin Garage Arts (G.A.G.A.)

Greater Austin Garage Arts is a wonderful community resource providing workshops on ready re-made fashions from upcycled articles of clothing and other post-consumer materials as well as how-to information and materials for folks that share our drive to DIY.  The G.A.G.A. Gals and Guys make a wonderful creative team full of sustainable ideas and workshop know-how that provide schools, camps, parties, civic organizations, businesses and groups large or small with skills and ideas that develop confidence, a positive self-image, goal achievement and more.

Aidan Cal, Sara Hasslinger, Amanda Jones and Lenell Ripley each created outfits for this group collection using discarded costumes, found objects, repurposed clothes and vintage materials.

Malissa Long

Nature and man-made: there are beauty in both.  Natural beauty is eternal while man-made fades and becomes a wasteland that can overtake nature. Malissa Long intermixed discarded man-made items with natural ones to instill a new beauty and transform the life of the discarded items. Malissa used a variety of recycled items for her collection including packing foam she found by a candy store, Tyvek scraps, fabric tubes, tubing from a soda fountain, highway mesh, wire mesh, bottle caps and aluminum cans. Malissa also took simple white upcycled t-shirts and textiles and dyed them using avocado peels to create an evening wear collection that is interesting for a night on the town no matter where it takes you.

Malissa wishes to thank Vanity Salon for their hair & make-up services.

Circe Torosian

Circe Torosian is 17 and will be a senior this year at LASA (the liberal arts and science academy) in Austin. Circe is captain of the Cheerleading Squad and her favorite classes are Bio-Technology, Environmental Sciences and Art.  Circe studied AP 3D Design, winning top honors for her innovative clothing and accessories in the VASE High School art competition. Her work was also selected for the regional high school art competition Ahead of Their Time at ARTHOUSE.  Recently, Circe showed her line of plastic bag dresses at Threadfare and was awarded 2nd place.

Circe is a founding member of the Teenage Eco Warriors, a teen service organization. The Teenage Eco Warriors created the current Austin Responds Wall and conducted a plastic bag Tu-Tu making workshop in June, here at AMOA.

Circe's line of woven plastic bag clutches can be found in The AMOA gift shop.

The dresses that Circe showed were made entirely of recycled plastic bags and household tape.