Parents, faculty, students, and sponsors crowded in the Kazu Fukuda Black Box Theater, buzzing with excitement as the lights dimmed. Reimagined Club Founder Anna Yang and Co-president Sofia Jellen stepped into the spotlight to present their theme this year: Déjà Vu: Through the Decades.
Reimagined, a club dedicated to reducing fast fashion by giving used clothing a second life, hosted their second annual fashion show on Jan. 19. Collaborating with Fashion Island, the fashion show displayed five different decades of fashion: the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s and 2000s. Club members created the runway pieces by sewing, painting and embellishing donated clothing. Pieces ranged from skirts, to jeans, to tanks and to coats, all redesigned to look new and in-fashion. Over 60 Sage Hill students volunteered as models and walked down the runaway, sporting designs from Reimagined’s design team.
“The purpose of the fashion show is to educate others on the consequences of fast fashion and to unite the community in advocacy of sustainability as the future. We hope that by seeing the reimagined pieces, our audience sees the endless potential in giving clothes a new life and taking the circular economy into consideration when making purchasing decisions,” Anna and Sofia said in a statement. By upcycling donated clothing, club members hope to spread awareness about the negative effects that fashion waste has on the environment. Showcased pieces of clothing will be sold online and in-person, and all profits will be donated to organizations fighting against fast fashion.
Influencer and guest speaker Lexy Silverstein spoke to the audience about the detrimental effects that fast fashion has on the environment. She emphasized the importance of shopping sustainably because the environment suffers severely for each item produced.
A lover of fashion since childhood, Silverstein is earning her bachelor’s degree in digital marketing at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM), where she ran a campaign against the school’s partnership with SHEIN, a clothing retailer that has been criticized by sustainable fashion advocates. Her petition to cancel this partnership quickly gained traction, earning her press that introduced her to a broader audience. Silverstein successfully lobbied her school to break off the partnership.
After wrapping the show, Reimagined Club members hugged and congratulated each other on a successful turnout.
“It feels amazing and we’re just happy to see so many people loving fashion, Reimagined and fashion sustainability,” Anna said. “We’re grateful to have so many people helping out with the fashion whether it was modeling, designing the pieces or just being in the audience. Thank you to the community for always supporting us.”
