Students create fashion show with upcycled clothing

Sydney Kostus
·2 min read
Students create fashion show with upcycled clothing

EDWARDSVILLE, LUZERNE COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) — Models will be strutting in a fashion show this weekend, and all the clothes are reused and upcycled into beautiful designs.

Combining some thread and pins can take a secondhand item like a black dress and transform it into a brand-new design. But Daniel Almonte says it’s not as simple as it looks.

“It does not happen overnight, we start very early in the year, like September, and then we slowly build up until spring.”

Almonte and Estephany Peguero are with the Educational Opportunity Center’s (EOC) talent search program, working on last-minute preps for their local students’ upcycle fashion show.

“We’ll take the students thrifting, they’ll kind of pick out what items they want to wear or what they think they might want to wear for the show, and then they go and they reconstruct those items and turn them into completely new looks.”

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The EOC is a non-profit that works with area school districts to help low-income students pursue different career paths and be a guide if they pursue college.

Events like the fashion show give kids the chance to experience the nitty-gritty of working in the industry, and the importance of sustainability.

“We have teams that go into marketing, we have teams that do hair and makeup, we have the stylists, we have the designers so really just a whole bunch of things that go into it.”

These looks will hit the runway at the marketplace at Steamtown from 1:30 to 4 p.m. Saturday.

The designs will be finally making their debut, but it’s the local students’ talents that are truly making the spotlight.

“It’s just so surprising how many of these kids are super shy and don’t know what they’re doing, and then you see them at the fashion show and they’re shining and just going for it,” says Almonte.

Local entrepreneurs will have their work on display at the marketplace at Steamtown from 1:30 to 4 p.m.

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