YSJ Sustainable Fashion Show

Damien Collis
Mar 28, 2025
6 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Across the end of 2024 and into spring 2025, Charlotte Bracken and I developed a sustainable fashion show shaped by a shared creative vision and a social message around sustainability. At its heart, the project aimed to bring people together through meaningful art, using fashion and performance to encourage reflection on the choices we make and the value we place on what we wear.

Our mission was to create a show centred on sustainable choices in fashion, while also trying to ensure that the event itself reflected those same values. This brought its own challenges. We had to think carefully about resources, make creative decisions with intention, and find ways of communicating the message without making the event feel like a lecture. From the beginning, it was important to us that the show felt engaging, collaborative, and artistically led.

While we developed the project together, our roles also grew in distinct ways as the event took shape across its design, production, and performance.

Design.

Space

Our shared vision for the show was to create the familiar format of a classic runway while incorporating elements of performance art within it. We wanted the event to feel carefully shaped rather than simply assembled, so we physically drew plans for how the space would be designed and how the audience would move through it. Drawing on aspects of our existing practice as performers, we refined the set, movement, and overall atmosphere into a cohesive environment.

Staging and Content

One of the ways we explored sustainability visually was through the movement of the models themselves. As they walked, they dropped clothes into a pile before choosing new items from a rail, reflecting the cycle of fast fashion and the speed with which garments are often discarded in pursuit of something new. Later in the show, the models returned to that discarded pile, lifted those same clothes, and wore them again on the runway. This was intended to show that older clothing still carries value, and that what is often overlooked or thrown away can be re-seen, reused, and given a new life. The clothes were picked beforehand in a workshop Charlotte organised to find clothes the models would be happy to wear, or take away and alter themselves.

This visual framing then opened into the three main sections of the show, each shaped by the models themselves. In doing so, the event moved beyond a general statement about sustainability and into something more personal, allowing each model to bring their own understanding of fashion, value, and reuse into the work.

This concept then unfolded across three sections, each shaped by the models themselves. That was an important part of the event, as it allowed them to bring their own meaning to what fashion meant to them and how they were approaching sustainability through the pieces they chose to wear.

The first section focused on resold clothing. Models wore items they had found through marketplaces, charity shops, and resale platforms such as Vinted and Depop. This highlighted the value of clothing that already exists and challenged the idea that style must always come from buying new.

The second section was restyled clothing, and this was my favourite part of the show because it revealed the creativity of everyone involved. Models took existing garments and transformed them into something new: fabric became dresses, dresses became skirts, and older items were reworked into pieces with a different identity. What stood out to me here was how individual personality could emerge through existing materials, showing that sustainability does not have to limit expression, but can instead become a source of new meaning and originality.

The third section focused on generational clothing, which gave the show a much more personal and poignant dimension. Models wore items that had been handed down from loved ones — leather jackets, hats, shoes, and other pieces that carried memory as well as material value. These garments became more than fashion choices; they acted as quiet tributes, allowing personal stories and family histories to become part of the runway itself.

Collaboration.

Charlotte’s steadfast work as Executive Producer meant that, through her outreach and commitment to finding the right people to work with, we were fortunate to collaborate with a wide range of people and organisations across the campus community.. This included musicians for our house band who believed in the message behind the event, Archie’s Bar as our host venue, film students who documented the whole process, and Living Lab, who provided resources such as used clothing for the dump pile featured in the show. We also collaborated with models from across the university, representing courses in the creative arts, sports, and sciences.

What made this especially meaningful was that many of the people involved had never met before, and some had never modelled in a fashion show at all. Over the course of the project, the camaraderie and encouragement that developed between them began to dissolve many of the self-doubts and anxieties surrounding the experience of walking the runway. It made me stop and reflect on the fact that, as performers and creative practitioners, we can sometimes forget how daunting and exposing these situations can feel for those who are not used to performing. What emerged through the project was a genuinely supportive community, held together by a shared commitment to the message and by the relationships that grew through the process itself.

This created a rich ecosystem of people who each brought something different to the project. Their contributions helped move the event from an idea into something real and shared. Looking back, that spirit of collaboration was one of the most meaningful parts of the process, because it showed how a socially driven piece of art can gather momentum when different people invest in it together.

Music.

This was the point in the project where my own role became more fully defined. I worked as Creative Director, with responsibility for shaping how the event functioned as a live experience. My role involved the production of the show as a whole: staging the event, mapping out how each section would unfold, working with props, cues, ordering, and directing the models and band so that the performance felt coherent and intentional. I was also closely involved in designing the final space and curating how the audience would encounter the event from beginning to end.

Alongside this, I composed the music and soundscapes for the show, which was both a challenge and a valuable learning experience. I wanted the music to evoke the atmosphere of early 2000s fashion television, drawing on the sound world of programmes such as America’s Next Top Model. That led me towards synth-led textures, bass-driven ideas, and rhythmic material that could capture the energy and stylised edge of those shows.

At the same time, I wanted to think about how the composition itself could reflect the show’s wider message of sustainability. Rather than constantly introducing new material, I worked with related motifs and ideas that could be altered, restyled, and developed across the event. In that sense, the music echoed the fashion itself: reusing, reshaping, and transforming existing ideas in order to create something new.

To realise this, I brought together a band of musicians I knew would be adaptable and responsive to my ideas, and they performed the music beautifully. Their flexibility and commitment were a major part of what brought the sound of the event to life.

Outcome/Reflection.

Our show took place on 28 March 2025, and the outcome was highly successful. Everyone involved seemed to find the experience exciting and rewarding, and the event helped foster new relationships and networks across campus. Most importantly, we were able to communicate our message in a way that felt engaging and appropriate to the medium.

Reflecting on the project, I was struck by the power of different creatives coming together to make meaning within the brevity of performance. That includes the audience too. One thing I sometimes forget is that, in this context, the audience are also performers in a sense: they shape the atmosphere, contribute energy to the room, and become integral to the success of the event simply through their presence.

Though Charlotte and I had different roles within the project, those roles became more fluid as the work developed, and so did our leadership styles. We found ourselves moving in and out of each other’s tasks, and that constant weaving between responsibilities helped keep the project grounded and reflective. It meant we could challenge and support one another’s ideas, asking the what, how, and why behind each part of the process. That exchange helped make the scope of the project feel both realistic and ambitious.

In many ways, it created an environment in which we were learning not only from the project itself, but from each other. From the larger creative and organisational decisions to the smallest practical details, every part of the process felt integral to delivering the event with care and quality.

The project also developed my confidence as a leader. I gained skills in organisation, communication, and creative direction, but I also came to enjoy leading in a way I had not expected. At first, I assumed leadership would feel high-stakes and stressful, but when you work with the right people - people who share the same vision and values, leadership becomes just one role among many, with everyone striving towards the same goal as equals.

More than anything, the experience reminded me that meaningful events are built not only on ideas, but on care, trust, and attention to detail.