By Rita Cook    
    
Andrea Allison’s day job is working at the City of Plano as the Commercial Recycling Coordinator so she is, of course, environmentally friendly. Earlier this year she tried her hand at an eco-friendly talent however, that she says was definitely out of her comfort zone. Allison took part in the Plano Live Green Expo’s eco-friendly fashion show along with the number of talented high school students who took the fashion show by storm.

However, another group that also wowed the audience of which Allison was a part of was called Trashion Designers.  The Trashion Designers were put to the test, and they passed, to design fashion made from materials or supplies that would normally be discarded or articles used for apparel or adornment, which is not its original intended purpose.  Allison’s design was a dashiki made from a used bath towel and sample drapery squares, which she purchased from Joanne Fabrics for a $1.  Her grandson Trey then modeled her design on stage at the fashion show.

Dashiki front, Dashiki back, Dress of gift bags and lei's

“My original concept was to make an outfit made from Caprisun containers for my eight-year-old grandson to wear.  The containers are so colorful and youthful,” Allison says.  “I had to scratch the Caprisun sun packaging idea though as they are not flexible [enough] to work with and even when I attempted to sew them on a thin fabric it didn’t have the look I wanted to achieve in my head.”

Allison says she decided to participate in the fashion show this year for a number of reasons “I am not in the industry at all,” she says speaking of the fashion industry “I just happened into the fashion show because this project was one of interest to me of the projects to be done for the City’s Live Green Expo.” 

She also credits the person in charge of the Green Living Expo Eco-Friendly Fashion Show as a particular inspiration in her involvement. “Since I work in the Environmental and Sustainability Services Department and the fashion show was to highlight green living then eco-fashion was the “fashion” of choice.

" I worked with Rita Keys, the fashion chairperson for the Green Expo fashion show for two years assisting with the logistics and details of this highly successful and well-attended event.”  Allison says that working with Keys was a wonderful experience “She is so modest, but she creates 99 percent of the Trashions and her designs are spectacular.  Did you see the dress she made the year before out of Oprah magazine pages or the design she came up with this year from wrapping paper?”  Live Green Plano fashion chair person Rita Keys with Trey

As for Allison’s own future fashion aspirations she says “Designing is not my forte’ and simply a fun challenge, but I’d undertake it again with a goal to come up with a new recycled materials design for my grandson, but not to wait until the last minute to test my design ideas,” she concludes. 

All photos compliments of the Plano Live Green Expo’s eco-friendly fashion show

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