Georgetown Renewable Energy and Environmental Network (GREEN), a student-run environmental advocacy group at Georgetown University, celebrated Earth Month with their first-ever Trashion Show, a fashion show featuring clothing made fully from upcycled materials, April 21. 

The show was one of over 25 eco-inspired events that GREEN, GradGov, Georgetown University’s Graduate Student Government, the Georgetown Office of Sustainability, the Earth Commons, which supports environmental policy reform and education at Georgetown, and the Earth Week Collaborative, the group organizing events for Earth Week, are hosting for Earth Month. The show displayed fashion items ranging from a dress made of coffee sleeves to a newspaper skirt, with students designing and modeling outfits and judges scoring them based on creativity, environmental significance, overall design and cohesion.

Makenna Dovel (CAS ’27), the creator of the event, said she was inspired to organize the show based on a demonstration she saw on trash bag usage in elementary school.

“When I was in elementary school, my school did this demonstration of how many trash bags were used in one day and piled them all up,” Dovel told The Hoya. “Seeing that visual demonstration of all the trash that was displayed was really effective in making me care about these issues and really made me understand the actual dilemma that was going on.”

Dovel also said she was inspired by her dad because the two of them frequently repurposed items.

“My dad and I were really interested in repurposing old things. I would never throw anything out,” Dovel said. “If I had a plastic cup, I would just make something new out of it.”

The Trashion show team initially ran into difficulty getting enough contestants for the show and decided to open the competition up to all schools in the Washington, D.C., area, which drew in students from the George Washington University (GWU). Nonetheless, the team found success after a last-minute donation from Depop, an app that sells second-hand clothing, and catering from Slow Food Georgetown, an organization that promotes social bonding through cuisine.

Bella Kumar, a junior at GWU, won the competition with her piece “Bag Lady,” which is meant to critique American consumerist culture through its use of branded plastic bags.

“It was a dress made out of plastic bags that were crocheted to make the top,” Kumar told The Hoya. “It’s a textile that I made out of fabric scraps and then the bottom was insulation.”

Kumar said that she intended to raise awareness on the effects of capitalism while reusing textiles to avoid consumerist culture.

“I think for me that hope is in being able to take care of yourself and live as sustainably as possible,” Kumar said. “And so being able to make your own textiles is really fun and interesting, particularly if you’re trying to escape consumerism.”

Dovel said that part of the goal of the show was to shock people on the amount of trash they throw out every day through inspiring contestants to create costumes using all sorts of trash, from Amazon Prime plastic bags to textile waste. 

“I wanted people to recognize how much waste was in the world and to think of a different way that they could make it more of a circular system,” Dovel said.

Genevieve Jobson (CAS ’26), a member of GREEN who tabled to raise student interest in the show, said the show was a full-day effort, with rehearsals and hair and makeup as well as a workshop with special guest Celia Ledón, a Miami, Fla.-based fashion artist and costume designer, in the Maker Hub.

“Rehearsing kicked off at 3 p.m., so we were having a dress rehearsal and marshaling all the models and hair and makeup,” Jobson told The Hoya. “Our special guest judge, Celia, was there and she had made some pieces for the runway, so she was getting her models ready as well. And then the show started at 6 p.m.” 

Dovel said the show offered an opportunity for students to reflect on their relationship with waste and their environmental footprint. 

“I kind of wanted to have that element of making people think about it and care and slightly overwhelmed,” Dovel said. “To try to get people to think, ‘Oh man, there is a lot of waste in the world. How can I be a part of solving this? How can I be a part of coming up with a new system that’s a little bit more circular, eco-friendly?’”