Carissa Wodehouse

From Trash to Fashion, Portland Tribune

Junk to Funk is a recycled fashion show that started the year I wrote about it and has since sold out entire show halls!

Appeared in the Portland Tribune Sustainable Life Section, Nov 2006.

Full text:

From trash to fashion
Sustainable Life: Artsy types take rubbish to runway, raise cash for environmental nonprofit

How much funk can be created from junk? At Portland’s first Junk to Funk: Recycled Fashion Show Contest, crafty locals will sashay down the runway in outfits made from curbside flotsam and Dumpster jetsam.

Junk to Funk, which calls itself “a night of trash, fashion, art and sustainability,” will feature 27 items of “wearable art,” including a kimono crafted from windsurfing sails, a mermaid tail woven from bicycle inner tubes, and a crayon suit complete with a Crayola-spiked mohawk.

Portland city Commissioner Sam Adams will emcee the event and will appear in recycled wares. Ticket sales will benefit Orlo, a local nonprofit that raises awareness about environmental issues through the creative arts.

Organizers Lindsey Newkirk and Elizabeth Fowler started the show as an experiment, with an open call for submissions of “fashion made out of found objects, recycled materials, and things you normally might find in the trash.”

In response they received nearly 40 entries, some from as far as New York City and Washington, D.C. Junk to Funk also gained sponsorship from local organizations and from the New Belgium Brewery and ReadyMade magazine, a favorite of the crafty crowd.

The majority of the ensembles were made by locals, most of whom are involved in the arts, but a few are full-time fashion designers. The challenge of using recycled materials appealed to sculptors, arts administrators, and others who saw opportunity in discarded objects.

A panel of local judges from the Metro Council, SCRAP, Orlo, Portland Sweatfree coalition and the Office of Sustainable Development also will be dressed in recycled clothing.