Wear it, Share it
Community-Based Sustainable Fashion Show · Co-Creator, Creative Director & Composer · 2025
Wear It, Share It was a community-led sustainable fashion show co-created with Charlotte Bracken and performed in March 2025. Bringing together runway, live music and performance, the project explored sustainability through the relationships people already had with their clothing: what they chose to keep, alter, inherit, reuse and value.
I worked as Co-Creator, Creative Director and Composer, developing the artistic structure, staging and music of the event, while Charlotte worked as Co-Creator and Executive Producer, leading production, outreach and the wider network of contributors.
Wear it, Share it (Film)
Workshop exploring donated clothes and hearing the stories behind the models chosen fashion pieces.
Our poster we distributed around York calling for participants.
Setting up workshop with donated clothes and info presentation on the values and aims of our project.
Individual Stories, Shared Value
Sustainability was not a narrative that Charlotte and I imposed on the event. We created the framework, but its meaning emerged through the different ways sustainability already featured in participants’ lives.
Before the performance, we hosted an open workshop where prospective models could bring clothing they wanted to wear, talk with us about the stories and choices behind those pieces, and explore garments donated through project partnerships, including Living Lab. This gave us an early space to listen to how people already understood sustainability through reuse, alteration, inheritance, memory and personal attachment.
Those conversations then informed the three strands of the show: resold, restyled and generational clothing. An altered garment could become an expression of individual creativity; an inherited piece could carry family history; second-hand clothing could continue to hold value beyond its first owner.
Brought together within one community-led event, these distinct experiences became the narrative of the show: individual stories connected by a shared understanding of value beyond newness.
Creative Direction
The creative direction gave these individual stories a shared structure without flattening their differences.We developed the event around the familiar format of a runway show, but used staging and movement to reinforce the project’s ideas around reuse and value. One recurring device involved models initially discarding clothing into a shared pile before those same garments later returned to the runway in a different context.
The same material was therefore encountered twice: first as something apparently unwanted, and later as something capable of being reconsidered, reused and valued differently.
My role involved shaping how the event functioned as a live experience — planning the space, sequencing the sections, developing cues and transitions, and directing how the models and live band moved through the performance.
My design of the set for our event after viewing the space at Archie's Bar.
Setting up the space from the design plan.
The 5 phases of our event.
Making the Event Together
The event was built through a wider network of contributors: models from across the university, a live band, student filmmakers, Living Lab, who supported the project with donated clothing and resources, and Archie’s Bar as the performance venue.
Their contributions were not simply practical. The participants’ clothing, personal histories, styling choices and ways of presenting themselves directly shaped what the audience encountered.
That balance between clear artistic direction and individual ownership became central to the project. Charlotte and I provided the framework, but the event gained its character through the different people working within it.
Composition
I composed the music alongside the development of the live event, drawing initially on the energy and visual language of early-2000s fashion television: synth-led textures, bass-driven material and strong rhythmic gestures that could support the pace of the runway.
As the project developed, I became interested in whether the compositional process itself could reflect the wider idea of sustainability. Rather than continually replacing material, I reused, altered and reframed recurring motifs across the show.
The same musical idea could return with a different texture, function or context, mirroring the principle already present within the clothing: existing material gaining new meaning through transformation rather than replacement.
The score was performed live by a band assembled for the event, keeping the music connected to the movement, timing and atmosphere of the show.
Workshop/rehearsal of my music with band leader and players.
The Event
Wear It, Share It was performed on 28 March 2025, bringing together fashion, live composition, performance and a community of contributors within one shared event.
The final show did not present one fixed definition of sustainability. Its narrative came from the different relationships participants already had with clothing — through reuse, alteration, inheritance, memory and personal value — held together within a common artistic framework.
That became the most significant outcome of the project: individual stories remaining distinct while contributing to a shared public experience.
Watch our post-show interview here!
