Lovette Saeñz, social media editor for Pulse Magazine at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, is combining her love for fashion and hope to encourage students to shop more environmentally aware by putting on the university’s first fashion show.
While recruiting student models last semester, she said that she emphasized that there were no requirements to join –– only that each outfit that makes it down the runway must be completely thrifted.
The eco-friendly fashion show is a part of the magazine’s event, Pulse Festival 2020, starting at 1 p.m. Friday, Feb. 21, at the quad of the Edinburg campus. The bands Honey Flowers, Wist, Yruama and TV Flesh are scheduled to take the stage while student organizations will have food and items for sale.
Entertainment and activities will run until 4 p.m, and the fashion show, which will feature 25 models, is slated for 3 p.m.
“I told the models to stay away from fast fashion and encourage them to look through thrift stores and other second-hand closets for pieces for their outfits,” said Saeñz, a junior pursuing a degree in mass communication with a concentration in advertising and public relations.
The show is categorized by seven decades, starting from the ‘60s to now, and each decade will follow one color.
“I wanted to do the show by decades because it was 2019 (when I had the idea for the fashion show), and we were going into a new decade,” said Saeñz, who has dreams of moving to New York. “I thought it would be nice to advertise the different decades and different fashion trends, while also promoting eco-friendly shopping.”
For the show, Pulse collaborated with thrift stores Ragz Revenge and Lazurus. Items from each store will be featured on the runway. The show also goes in hand with an article in the magazine entitled, “Old Fashion is the Future” by Pulse’s editor-in-chief, Patricia Ramon.
“It is about how thrifting is not only incredibly good for your wallet, but also the environment,” said Ramon, a junior pursuing degree in mass communication with a concentration in print at UTRGV.
According to research by Business Insider, the fashion industry produces about 10% of all carbon emissions, and is the second-largest consumer of the world’s water supply.
Additionally, the production of clothes has only gone up, doubling since 2000. People bought 60% more garments in 2014 than 2000, but only kept the clothes for half as long, causing an average about one full garbage truck of clothes being burned or dumped in a landfill every second.
“If they continue to produce their fast fashion items, the fashion industry would account for a quarter of the world’s carbon budget by 2020,” Ramon said “So throughout the magazine, we talk about how thrifting is a big part of conservation, how second-hand buying is a big part of that. So we are not giving our money to companies who don’t really care about the environment and don’t have the planet’s interest in mind.”
The magazine is aiming to have their fifth edition out in April.
Even before the idea of the fashion show surfaced, the magazine’s staff has been thrifting together many times. And to create outfits for the show, they scheduled days to scout for pieces of certain decades –– sometimes also finding things for their own closet.
“As college students, a lot of us want to dress nice and not break our own wallets,” Ramon said. “So I tell people about how thrifting is great for the environment.”
Gaby Gonzalez, a writer for Pulse who is also a junior pursuing a degree in mass communication with a concentration in print,
“Some of us at Pulse have been interested in thrifting, and so we thrifted to bond with each other,” she said. “There’s something about thrifting. It’s cool to know you can reuse peoples’ clothing. What someone might think is trash could be loved by someone else,”
Gonzalez was wearing a pair of dark green corduroy pants, a pair she found at a thrift store last year. The will be one of the models at the show, and is a part of the ‘90s group.
“Through this fashion show, I have seen how every individual has their own style of clothing, and I think that embodies something so cool,” she said. “It’s so nice seeing that everyone is gathering for this event, and they’re being true to themselves and having fun with it. With the whole ‘you can only be thrifting and colors per decade’ thing, it’s cool seeing what people have been coming up with.”
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