Students turned recycling into runway-ready ‘trashion’, and some of the looks were properly jaw-dropping.
Johannesburg, South Africa (13 August 2025) – St Mary’s has a tradition that’s as clever as it is creative: every year, students design, make, and model their own ‘trashion’ outfits for the school’s STAMP Festival.
The style brief encourages learners to think boldly, work sustainably, and turn everyday waste into wearable art.
The Visual Arts crew at St. Mary’s Waverly went all in. Cereal boxes and cardboard became structured bodices. Bubble wrap swished into dramatic trains. Black refuse bags were ruched into full-on ball gowns and stacks of old newspapers were pleated, folded and fanned into couture-style skirts, two-pieces and even clutch bags. We also spotted Checkers Sixty60 bags reimagined as tufted skirts!
As the school shared: “Using recycled and waste materials like plastic bags, newspapers, bottle tops, and CDs, these young designers explore fashion as wearable art – while also learning about sustainability and the impact of fast fashion.”
The project required learners to plan a silhouette, source clean recyclables, test how materials behave (who knew a bin bag could drape like chiffon?), and then bring it all together with pattern-making and problem-solving.
When the lights went up, designers became models, owning the runway in outfits that started life in the bin.
A few looks stopped us in our tracks: a vintage-inspired gown sculpted entirely from book and newspaper pages, complete with a hat and fan; a cloud-like black dress made from hundreds of hand-tied plastic rosettes, finished with a bold, winged shoulder; and a newspaper ballgown that twirled like confetti. Proper showstoppers.
And the message lands. Fashion can be fun and still be kind to the planet.
The St Mary’s Trashion showcase turns “reduce, re-use, recycle” into something you can literally walk into, and it leaves everyone a little more inspired to think before they throw.
Sources: Linked above
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