From Marie Antoinette to Bloody Mary portrayals, students kicked off the Halloween season by creating recycled outfits for the “Trick or Trashion” fashion show, hosted by the Green Coalition on Oct. 26 in the lobby of the Henderson Campus Center

Green Coalition Co-Vice President Abigail Riedel, ’27, started planning the fashion show over one month ago and was happy to see everything coming together.

“I personally love art and I love seeing people use different mediums,” Riedel said. “I’m hoping this kind of encourages people to use trash as a medium as well.”

The Green Coalition is a new club that emerged by the combination of five different clubs, Green Students of Color Society, Students for Environmental Action, Sustainable Design Team, Bike Share and Food Recovery Network.

“We are all one now,” Riedel said. “This is us incorporating kind of those old events and traditions into a new club. This was a really fun experience, you know, having around halloween time.”

The “trashion” shows have been going on since 2009 and used to be held by Students for Environmental Action. They were mostly focused on alerting people about fast fashion, which, according to Riedel, is still a real problem.

However, the “Trick or Trashion” show had a different premise.

“I believe, since this is kind of a newer event, we are kind of starting off more baseline with just trying to make sustainability more accessible to the students — kind of teaching them about how something they would easily throw out before can now be repurposed,” Riedel said. “I did the trashion (show) last spring and I still have my outfit. I dismantled it and made an art piece with it.”

To Riedel, the most fun part of the process of organizing the show is seeing the costumes coming together.

“Seeing from their sketches to, like, fully planning out how they are gonna pose with their stuff, it’s just awesome,” Riedel said.

Katelyn Ebbert, ’29, partnered with her friend Zahra Evans, ’29, to design and put together an outfit for the show.

According to Ebbert, she had little experience with designing an outfit.

“I have some experience from going to pop culture conventions and stuff, making crops, but I’ve never really made an outfit before,” Ebbert said.

Similar to Ebbert, Evans had done crochet before, but never an outfit out of trash like they did together.

Their outfit was inspired by Marie Antoinette.

“We originally just knew that we wanted to do a big skirt, and we weren’t sure how to translate that over until our friend Skyler said it kind of looked like a cake,” Ebbert said. “So then from there, I was like ‘Oh my god’, lightbulb-moment, Marie Antoinette.”

They started working on the costume a month prior to the Trick or Trashion, meeting once a week for a total of 10 hours.

The skirt was made out of “The Campus” newspapers. According to Ebbert, that was Evans’ idea.

“Honestly, because we were making this out of recycled materials, our skirt-looking options were kind of limited,” Evans said. “But we liked the drape of the paper and just gave it such a unique texture and pattern.”

Ebbert said that they wanted to find a way to incorporate something integral to Allegheny, so “The Campus” newspapers seemed like a good idea.

They were happy with the outcome of the outfit.

“I think there were moments that we weren’t so sure, but then after we were walking on the stage and got our awards, it made us feel like everything came together in the end,” Ebbert said. “It was great.”

Evans agreed, saying that there were definitely challenging moments but that she was happy with the result.

Ebbert was the one who walked on the stage wearing the outfit. The team placed first in three different categories and third in another one.

Riedel also commented on how impressed she was with the contestants’ outfits.

“It exceeded my expectations, like every time and every way,” Riedel said. “It was awesome.”

Throughout the time the participants had to prepare their costumes, Green Coalition hosted regular workshops so everyone could gather materials to work with.

Riedel also appreciated Director of Creek Connections Wendy Kedzierski and Director of Sustainability Kelly Boulton, ’02, who helped them gather the necessary supplies.

“They provided literally all of our materials,” Riedel said. “Anything from cardboard that, you know, wasn’t being used. We had a lot of craft supplies.”

Another difference of the “Trick or Trashion” show this year was the judges, all three of whom own or work at different businesses in Meadville. That included the owner of Hatch Hallow, an art supply store in town, the owner of the Green Shoppe, a home goods store from Meadville and an employee of the Market House, a local market in town.

According to Riedel, making them judges was a way to bring people from the Meadville community to participate in one of the college events.

“There is kind of a separation, I feel like, between Meadville and Allegheny, not within its practices because Allegheny, I think, is very good with actually connecting with Meadville,” Riedel said. “It’s more so the students, kind of finding a different avenue to kind of connect them back into town. Those are my three favorite places to go, so that’s why I went in and asked about it (being the judges).”

The Green Coalition hopes to have the “Trick or Trashion” show again next year.

“That’s the hope, for sure,” Riedel said. “I am very excited, because that also means next year will go a lot smoother with planning, because now I know where to go.”