Trashion Fashion - Earth Day Awareness!

For Earth Day this year, Zoo staff and guests were treated to the first ever Teen Ambassador ‘Trashion Fashion’ show! After many long months of hard work, our devoted group of TAs strutted their stuff up and down the steps of the hippo theater in their elaborate trashion outfits while educating the public about the dangers of trash and the environmental benefits of recycling. Each TA contributed their time and effort to various parts of the event, either through design and creation of outfits, compiling data and research to present as important facts, or being directly involved with the show as a charismatic model or host. To get a better idea of what the TAs experienced throughout the entire process, their supervisors asked that the teens document their emotions, thoughts and contributions in a short diary-like entry. We share with you some of those entries to give you a peek into the accomplishments and difficulties the Teen Ambassadors faced.

Preparation underway.

Brandis, Age 18:

There were ideas circulating within the Teen Ambassador group about major projects that we should work on throughout the program. Since this was such a diverse and creative group of young people, the coolest ideas came about! One brilliant Teen Ambassador suggested that we put on a ‘trashion’ show. This show would have us creating outfits made up of recycled material. Afterwards, we would model the outfits for an audience. Get it?: “Trashion fashion!” Someone’s awesome idea created that word play. The rest of the Teen Ambassadors were all in favor of having a trashion show so we started coming up with ideas of what kinds of outfits we could make using chip bags, water bottles, soda cans and candy wrappers. When the outfits were being made it was time for my fashion-designing abilities to be utilized to the fullest! We needed to gather 500 bags in order to complete the epic plastic bag beast outfit. It was all worth it in the end when I saw the masterpiece that I created.

Brandis's bow-tiful accessories!

Nicole, Age 16:                                                                  

 

I felt the ‘Trashion Fashion’ show was a fun experience. When creating the outfits, I focused mainly on getting my dress done on time – which I didn’t stress much over thanks to the help of a fellow Teen Ambassador. I worked on my own dress until half of the construction was completed and then handed it off to another Teen Ambassador. I helped a little bit on editing research information into our own words. Doing that was not very stressful since I had the information already presented in front of me. During the actual trashion show and rehearsal I felt somewhat embarrassed. We were in front of all these people in these odd and quirky outfits made of trash! How ridiculous I thought we all looked. It felt very odd to be in the outfits and to be walking about amongst the guests. But I gained more confidence and felt less embarrassed about it when I knew I wasn’t alone. Knowing that I wasn’t alone allowed me to feel more comfortable, and as the saying goes, “there’s strength in numbers”. I believe that I gained strength from my fellow Teen Ambassadors. By having them with me, I was able to abandon all embarrassment I felt and just have fun with the whole experience. In the end, I really enjoyed myself. Now that the trashion show is done and over with, I am relieved. Though I had fun, I do admit there were some things that could have been changed – such as fixing outfits that were falling apart or knowing exactly what to do during the trashion show.  If I could change anything about my own performance I would show more expression and do more actions. I also feel like we should have done the full rehearsal earlier than the day before. I noticed that some of the outfits, such as the bag dress and my own packing peanut dress, were somewhat hard to move in. I feel that if we had found this out earlier we could have found ways to make small adjustments to the outfits. Overall, I am content with the outcome of the Trashion Show and am happy to report that the outfits will hopefully be making an appearance at Green Fest in August. The outfits were made to enlighten people about their waste and to tell them what they can do to change this. Hopefully this event will happen for years to come so that the Zoo can continue to enlighten people about their waste use and help make our environment and our world a better place.

 

Nicole and Zannat - very fashion forward!

Fong, Age 16:

I didn’t have that much involvement during the process of making the costumes, but I did have experience in modeling the costumes. On the day before Earth Day, all of the Teen Ambassadors had a day of rehearsal. The rehearsal was a trial run where we would take suggestions and add input about our performance. On the first trial, we performed wearing our costumes, then we took suggestions and after that we did another round without the costumes. On Earth Day I felt nervous, but I knew that I was prepared. On the way to the Hippo Theater, guests were looking at us and already saying good job. It was finally time for the first show. At the first show, as I walked down the runway, I looked up and saw a big crowd of people. As I modeled wearing my costume it felt like everyone just stared at me. Yet, even though everyone was looking at me, I went with it. It was a lot of fun doing the show. I had to model for two shows, where I felt a lot of pressure, but it was fun. After the show, all the Teen Ambassadors walked up to the Eco Center, and every guest that we saw stopped us to take pictures. After the show, everyone was tired and took off their costumes and finally took a break to relax. The Trashion Show was fun, and I would like to continue the series in years to come.

The crew in the Tropical Forest taking pics with visitors.

Zannat, Age 17:

The Trashion Show was a stressful, but successful experience. At first, the idea of a trashion show was brilliant. It was new and exciting and seemed like fun to plan out. The first couple days of work were fine: there were no deadlines, everyone was still coming up with ideas, and no one took on any heavy responsibility just yet. As the weeks progressed, we started to realize that we were working too slow, didn’t have all the materials we needed for our initial ideas, and needed to start the educational part of the show, which was the most important. At first we planned that everyone would have a turn making the clothes and doing the research and we would switch off every half hour. This didn’t work out so well because some people didn’t know what or how to research, and others weren’t as interested in research as they were in making clothes. As the weeks went on, everyone kind of drifted off and did their own work, not wanting to switch off or do something other than what they were comfortable with. Some people just worked on one specific outfit, others were involved with other projects and helped make accessories sometimes. I was given the most stressful and laborious task of finding all the information and making a board. On top of the research, I helped plan all of the outfits and worked on the majority of two of them. As the day of the Trashion show grew nearer, I got more and more stressed. I remembered that Randy, another Teen Ambassador, was doing most of the talking, so that relieved some of my stress. Doing a run through the day right before really calmed my nerves and showed me that all the hard work we had done over the weeks had paid off and that the show would go smoothly. The day of the show couldn’t have gone any better! We got a bunch of people to watch, everyone complimented our outfits, and we even got another gig to show off our costumes at the Boston Green Fest in August! I couldn’t have asked for a better day. Now that the Trashion show is over, a lot of the stress and anxiety I had before is gone. Knowing that we completed our largest project and it went better than expected was a huge relief. All the hard work that we had done has paid off, and that’s why even though it was super stressful the day leading up to it, it was very successful in the end.

The reason behind the show!

 As a Teen Ambassador supervisor, it was incredibly rewarding seeing the Hippo Theater packed with excited guests who couldn’t wait to see the Trashion Show that the teens spent so much time putting together. We understood there would be difficulties in the beginning, a few struggles with costume decisions, construction and obtaining information. But, the Teen Ambassadors pulled together and the show went off without a hitch. Children sat in the front row, wide-eyed and amazed! The public sat quietly and listened to our Emcee, Randy, as he explained alternatives to using non-recyclable material. The Trashion Show crowd was even speckled with interested Zoo staff who had been hearing about the show for months. Judging by the above entries, it would appear that the TAs agree that the show was indeed a hit!

In lights!

The entire Teen Ambassador group would like to thank all the Zoo staff that donated materials for the outfits, those that created their own accessories and for the support they received the day of the event.