Preview: SASAH students challenge fast fashion with immersive showcase | Culture

The SASAH Fashion Show is dismantling the fast fashion industry without the usual broken seams and buttons. 

Every year, the fourth-year students in the School for Advanced Studies in Arts and Humanities do a collective capstone project. This year, they have chosen to organize a fashion show next Monday with the theme and title “Mea Culpa,” which translates to “my fault” in Latin. 

Margaret Gleed, a fifth-year SASAH student and one of the show’s project managers, says the curriculum of the capstone course is about endorsing change through sustainability and ethical product sourcing. 

“We’ve done a lot of work with sustainability, with identifying different groups that are affected by problematic situations and doing research on [these] kinds of prolonged effects,” Gleed says.

Gleed says the idea for the interactive project formed as a rejection of the work they normally complete and a desire to do something creative. 

“To do something that we don’t typically do as arts and humanities students, which is mostly writing, and looking at how we can cause a little bit of chaos, a little bit of disruption, but also raise awareness at the same time,” says Gleed.

At the surface level of fast fashion, consumers rarely consider where their products come from. The project research aims to provide some answers. 

Exploring questions like how the clothing is made, who supplies the materials, who does the construction, who works in the factories and what the different environmental factors are at the front of the class’s minds.

Gleed and fourth-year SASAH student Kate Armstrong have been coordinating the project’s efforts as project managers. This includes the creative team’s alterations, the models — which include many younger SASAH students — script writing and audiovisual teams.

Daniel Kime, another fourth-year SASAH student working on audiovisual components, says the show’s title imposes a feeling of guilt that consumers might feel when engaging in the fast fashion industry.

“It’s hard to separate oneself from those systems, whether it’s economic or political… [the show] is an acknowledgement of doing wrong,” he says.

Kime doesn’t want to push a specific narrative for students to take away but admits that students should think more critically about the ethical concerns relating to fashion.

“We kind of shove it down their throats so much that they can’t not think of it,” he says.

The class looked at Plato’s Allegory of the Cave to talk about how the public views fast fashion and buys clothes without realizing its deeper impact on the world. 

“Everyone has that point of time in their life where they are told something and they believe it for face value. Nothing bad. We all do it. And so we want our project to push people past that and start to break the chains and climb out of Plato’s cave,” says Gleed. 

The fashion show will donate profits through a pay-what-you-can entry — with a minimum of $5 — to LifeSpin, a non-profit organization empowering low-income people and families in London, Ont.. Community members can also donate unused clothing to gain entry. 

“We know we can’t change the world. We can’t change everyone’s perspective on fast fashion,” says Gleed. “We can’t tell people to stop buying it, but just be a little bit more aware and intentional with your actions.”

Tickets for the show on Monday at 7:30 p.m. in the D.B. Weldon Library Community Room can be purchased online. Doors open at 7 p.m..

Correction (Nov. 21, 4:30 p.m.): This article has been edited to correctly reflect Gleed and Armstrong’s titles in the show.