Recycle in style

Locally sourced and sustainable are phrases popping up with increased frequency on food labels and restaurant menus.

If you are what you eat? What about what you wear?

Designs using recycled fabrics and materials will again shine in the spotlight on April 6 for the fifth annual Recycle in Style Fashion Show, presented by Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency with Goodwill of the Heartland.

What you need to know: 

• WHAT: 2013 Recycle in Style Fashion Show
• WHERE: 1441 Blairs Ferry Road NE, Cedar Rapids
• WHEN: 7 p.m.  April 6 (Doors open at 6:30 p.m.)
• RSVP: www.recycleinstyle.org

Even the runway is sustainable, made from broken pallets at Goodwill's Cedar Rapids facility.

Through their designs Melissa Collins and LADYFITS, created by Goodwill of the Heartland Thrift Artist in Residence Sonya Darrow, will each show the audience how to re-envision a garment as material that can be repurposed.

Darrow has been involved with the show both as a designer and director since its inception.

“It has been great to see growth in the community over the past five years in regards to sustainable fashion,” she says. “The show has become a great starting block for designers to be free with their designs. To me, that is what I really enjoy about my role for each year's show: I get the opportunity to give others a creative platform and then see what they do with it.”

This year, she gave Goodwill's Day Habilitation art programing clients the role of set designer.

“The clients sketched out ideas while I assisted them along collectively to come up with a set design made from broken palettes,” Darrow says. “I also worked with the clients on their own personal style to walk the runway.

“To witness their confidence makes the show for me. I had one client tell me ‘This is the dress of my life.'” Darrow says. “The clients ... are one of my main inspirations.”

For Collins' second year as a designer with the show, she created 14 looks inspired by various textures.

“My first outfit was designed out of tights material,” Collins says. “I wanted to create an outfit that was surprising, fit well, and was comfortable. The recycled tights material fit the bill.”

In another outfit, she made a dress out of pajama bottoms.

In addition to unique designs created by Collins and Darrow the show will feature complete outfits for children and adults put together from clothing that came from Goodwill stores.

Giving gently-used clothing from the Goodwill a new closet, conserves the raw material used to make the clothes as well as the energy to manufacture and transport clothes.

“Every time people donate to Goodwill, that material is diverted from the landfill,” says Brent Watkins, creative services manager for Goodwill of the Heartland. “If it isn't sold than it is sent to textile recycling.”

In 2012 Goodwill of the Heartland recycled 6,150,000 pounds of textiles.