"Good evening everyone, and welcome to the 2025 Wearable Arts Runway show," said the emcee, as a senior inspired by ancient Greece— Nicholas Garbacky— swept onto the stage wearing a gold cape and garland.
For nearly twenty years, students at this private school in Charlottesville have been invited to strut their stuff on a fashion runway, wearing clothes they designed and created from newspaper and aluminum cans, pull tops and tin foil, magazines, party hats, wrapping paper and bottle caps.
This year, teacher Blair McAvoy oversaw the enterprise— challenging students to find inspiration in artists and trends from the past.
“The goal is for them to find recycled, non-traditional materials, and really you can just make a lot with something as simple as paper or cardboard,” she says.
Giada Johnston, Nori Zhang and Layla Welsch did just that.
“My theme was impressionism and Monet water lilies,” Johnston says. “The top is made out of papier mache newspaper and magazines, and then the skirt was rolled up magazines in a much more abstract style, and I added tissue-paper flowers,” Johnston explains.
“The theme was Victorian. The top is made out of cardboard, and then the dress is a plastic tarp with plastic bags filled with stuffing to keep it supported while I walk,” Zhang says.
“I am a swimmer, so every day I go to practice, and I’m handed a workout on paper, and I take those home with me, and I fold them up, and I made them into a dress. I’m a senior, so I’ve been swimming for so many years, and to be able to accumulate all my years of swimming and then my years of runway or high school into one piece – it was fun. It was like a display of my life,” Welsch recalls.
Cadigan Perriello painted old discs and CDs, attaching them to a base of duct tape and a skirt made from old T-shirt fabric.
“My theme was the Four Seasons, based on Bob Ross’s Landscape Art Movement, so my skirt was fall, so I colored discs in fall colors. My top was summer, so I made a lot of sun-oriented things. I had a flower crown, which was supposed to be spring, and then my sleeves -- I had like icicles hanging down from them. That was winter.”
And Tre Mason found inspiration in Harlem.
“I started from the 1940’s like Zoot Suit era. Dancers for jazz clubs would have very baggy or loose-fitting pants, and they would be tapered at the ankles to allow them to dance better,” he explains.
Forty students took part in five three-hour workshops after school, learning to use lasers to cut materials.
Some hope this experience will propel them into a career in the arts or fashion, but for Johnston there was satisfaction in the show alone – seen by nearly 700 people in person and online.
“The round of applause was nice but I think also seeing the reactions of people closer to me and how proud they were of me, and how proud I was of myself. It was a lot of effort, and I put in the work, and it really paid off.”
Some designs were elegant, others quirky – like the outfit dubbed caffeinated couture – made from coffee filters and bottle caps, and a number of students designed futuristic suits of armor to protect them in apocalyptic times.
