Modified Style Portland Fashion Show

Modified Style Portland is a non-profit, community enhancement organization that supports and encourages the growth of Portland's socially and environmentally progressive identity through fun, accessible, sustainable fashion. Their main event is an annual fashion show were donated fabric is used by designers to create innovative designs, which are auctioned off to benefit local charities. 

My design process began with word association. I started with the show theme, "sustainability," and from there found livable, endurable, continual, repeated, rooted and responsive. I explored rooted and came up with "grounded in tradition". I expanded on tradition and found folklore, myth, tales from the past, lifestyle, custom and fashion. I found many links between sustainability, and the idea of reusing and passing down, tradition and stories, customs and lifestyles, and tree roots connecting everyone. 

Ukrainian folk dress, 1950's housewives, tree roots, summer brights, bold brows, and power dressing of the 1980's were design influences.