The Green Show

ArtsFest at Boston College is a weekend when students get the chance to showcase their artistic passions for the Boston College community.  This year, I took part in ArtsFest with a team of girls – Elizabeth Barthelmes, Lauren Gomez, Kathie Chang, Meg Lister, and Ariane Ankarcrona – to produce The Green Show (TGS).  TGS worked to educate students, faculty, and guests about sustainable fashion by displaying beautiful and thoughtfully made looks from a variety of noted designers and design-minded students.  At our event, we showcased eco-fashion designers, vintage pieces, and original student designs made from reused, repurposed, and recycled materials.
 
TGS also had written speech component.  In early February, students tried out to be our slam poets for the show.  The winners of the competition were asked to create poetry pieces that reflected sustainability and environmental issues.  These poems were woven into the flow of the show.

As one of the leaders of TGS and vice-president of EcoPledge, I wanted to make sure that people truly understood the educational component behind sustainable fashion.  To achieve this, Marci Zaroff opened the show with a brief introduction on sustainable fashion.  Marci is an internationally recognized expert in the field and coined the term ECOfashion®, which is the fusion of style and sustainability.  Her clothing line FASE was also featured in our show.
 
The day of The Green Show was total chaos!  A million things were going on backstage, but by the time the lights dimmed we were ready to go.  TGS was a complete success.  We had about 400 people in the audience and got rave reviews about how amazing our models, poets, and designers were!
 
A big part of why our show was so successful was
because of the collaboration and partnership we had with professional designers.  Elizabeth and I partnered with Judi Shils, the president of Teens Turning Green.  Teens Turning Green is a national organization that promotes teen advocacy and college level awareness about environmental issues.  With Judi’s help, we were able to make fabulous connections with designers such as Eileen Fisher, Loomstate, Stewart + Brown, and Looptworks.

We ended the show with one of the most breathtaking pieces (and I’m not just talking about the shirtless gentleman and past campus cutie, John Pizzuti!).  The final piece was a dress created by Natracare, an organic feminine hygiene products company.  They created their ball gown out of their products and boxes!
 
From the stage decorations made out of reusable water bottles to the organic make-up used on the models and even the lights running on biodiesel, The Green Show encompassed not just eco-fashion but environmentally friendly lifestyle choices.