By Alexandra Madsen

This was the second year Ms. Chisholm’s Art 1 classes have put on a group fashion show. During 2nd, 3rd, and 8th periods on Friday March 28, students strutted down the runway in 100 percent recyclable ensembles. The task was for each student to create a piece of clothing of their own, while also conforming to accompany the group’s ensemble as a whole. The project not only required creating an original piece of art, but the students also used teamwork skills to work around construction and design challenges.

“They were very excited in the design process because they had great ideas of things they could make,” Chisholm said. “But then in terms of making it, it’s a very hard uphill battle trying to make something out of recyclables. There was so much problem solving, but it turned out really great.”

One of the difficult parts of the project was trying to turn the recyclables into the pieces they sketched in their journals. Students were assigned to use at least 50 percent of a certain recycled material they were assigned (newspaper, bubble wrap, etc.) and the other 50 percent could be of any recycled material they chose to use. This caused some students and groups to develop different uses of materials.

“I had some students who at the end were pleasantly surprised at what they were able to create,” Chisholm said. “I had one student Olivia who wasn’t sure how her skirt was gonna come out. I could tell how invested she was in the whole process.”

Olivia Clafford, Div. 752, is one of the students who participated in the project, and it was the first time she had done something like it. Although sometimes challenging, Clafford felt that, with the help of weekly checkups on each piece, the end project fit together perfectly.

“It was really nice not only getting to know my group because we were working together,” Clafford said. “[Based on the results of the} sculpting, at first I wasn’t sure if it was going to turn out, but Ms. Chisholm gave me some tips and it just came together.”

Chisholm gave Clafford tips to help with the ‘puffiness’ of the skirt. Clafford was having problems making the newspaper seem voluminous. Through trial and error she realized that sewing the newspaper  together helped the volume instead of stapling.

The fashion show at Lane has not only been a team problem solving project but also an emphasizer for ‘process.’

“I’ve always been fascinated by process,” Chisholm said. “I wish that everyone could somehow know all of the steps and struggles the student had to go through. I would like to do like a time lapse video to follow each object because in some cases it had to be completely reinvented several times.”

This fashion show in Chisholm’s opinion is one of the best ones yet. She hopes that in upcoming years she can create something that shows all the steps leading up to the final product. This way, people can see all the hard work her students have put in.