By Rita Cook   

The City of Plano works hard to promote green living and nowhere is this more obvious than in taking a look at how younger Plano residents are getting in on the action.  At this year’s Live Green Expo held in Plano earlier this year the event’s one-day eco-fashion show brought a number of green designers together.  (Below:  The gold/silver dress  was made from holiday wrapping paper.  The red designs were made from feed sacks and the third garment was made from old denim and plastic bags.).

 

 

 



 

 

Allison Gaughan a high school student at Plano Senior High School student  won the Plano Live Green Expo - Eco Fashion Show award this year for her efforts.  Her design?  A dress for the show made entirely out of hand ruffled men’s ties that were hand sewn into a cocktail dress.  It was only this past March that Gaughan says she even began to think about green fashion when her high school instructor Bonnie Turnbo had her and other members of her class do a project for the show.  (Below: Allison is in the center wearing her prize winning creation)

A bit of a fashion maven since the first grade anyway, Gaughan says she is glad she had the chance to take part in the eco-fashion show since she has been taking Fashion Design classes at Plano Senior High School for the past two years.  She is currently enrolled in Advanced Fashion Design.  Gaughan has also won a Vitamin Water Challenge that Vitamin Water created for the Galleria Dallas' Fashion Camp and she says won an award for the "Most Creative Camper" at the Galleria Dallas' Fashion Camp this past summer too.

As for her earlier fashion attempts she says “When I was in the first grade I was a Brownie in Girl Scouts,” she explains. “All of my friends were in my troop and all of their moms sewed on their badges. My mom however, hot glued them on. I would come home from the meetings whining and complaining about how the other girl’s moms loved them more than my mom loved me because their badges were sewed securely on. My mom eventually grew sick of hearing my continuous complaints and told me she’d teach me how to sew them on myself.”

A few days later Gaughan’s mother hauled out an ancient Russian machine her mother gave her. “Keep in mind,” Gaughan adds “My mom was never the typical homemaker the other moms were. She hated that machine, due to the fact it took a whole afternoon to just get it setup, and as soon as I learned how to use it I hated it as well, so I taught myself how to hand sew the badges on. I enjoyed it so much I taught myself how to make doll clothes and things until I got older and learned what patterns were and then free internet tutorials taught me until I got to Plano and took Fashion Design 1.”

In creating her eco-fashion designs, like her winning piece in the fashion show Gaughan says she almost always uses formal wear in making her green creations “I usually use whatever has the texture I want to have on the piece,” she explains.  A senior, Gaughan says that while she does not have a fashion job lined up yet after graduation “I have been training, in a sense, to prepare myself for going into fashion design since I was a little girl.”  

She also concludes she is not sure where her eco-fashion goals will take her in the future but, like any teen she loves dressing hip and with Gaughan she knows how to make her own pieces in order to do that.

“I occasionally enjoy making dresses out of other pieces [recycling] when I don't have the money or time to make something for, like the Harry Potter midnight showing, and doing fun things like that.”



Rita Cook is an award winning journalist who writes or has
written for the Dallas Morning News, Focus Daily News, Waxahachie Daily
Light,  Dreamscapes Travel Magazine,
Porthole, Core Media, Fort Worth Star Telegram and many other publications in
Los Angeles, Dallas and Chicago.  Cook is
the Managing Editor of Insider Magazine, worked at the Chicago Sun Times for renowned
columnist Irv Kupcinet and can also be heard Sunday morning in Los Angeles on
The Insider Magazine Radio Show’s featured segment “I’m Standing Here.”  With five books published, her latest release
is “A Brief History of Fort Worth” published by History Press.  You can contact her at rcook13@earthlink.net