Fashion Club Makes Dresses for Community Partners

Fiona Riley ‘22

Kassidy Kryukov ‘24

The Fashion Club was created this year to educate community members on the history and importance of using clothing as a form of self expression. Leaders Bridget Murphy ‘25, Delaney Welsh ‘24, Kate Lamb ‘24, Lily Hendrickson ‘24, and Tory Lynn ‘25 spent the majority of meetings in the first semester discussing modern trends and designers, as well as providing opportunities for students to hands-on learn about sewing. 

When asked about the inspiration for the club, Lamb states, “We are all incredibly passionate about fashion and think it needs to be included as a form of art in high school. Creating this club has allowed for more people to become aware of the creativity and talent that goes into fashion designing, which was exactly our intent when we began.” Similarly, Welsh adds that “fashion is something that you see among the students but is not something represented in an art class or club. It’s art in a different facet.” 

During each meeting, the club members choose a topic to discuss and then allow for the conversation to flow from there.“We recently presented on Philly based designers, the Met Gala, and fashion during Halloween,” Hendrickson elaborates. Welsh adds that within the fashion industry “there are models, there’s stylists, and just so many pieces of the puzzle, and we would really like to explore all of them in the club.”

One of the club’s biggest projects so far has been a collaboration with Rebecca Brinks, Community Service Coordinator. She explains her involvement in the club, saying, “I was approached about doing some sort of a service project and because it’s a fashion club and they were interested in sewing and creating things, I had read about making little dresses for girls.” She continues, “because of Episcopal’s connection to St. Marc’s School in Haiti, we decided to make dresses for the little girls from the village with the hopes that when Fr. Gavin and some students go again they can take them along.” 

On November 20th the club members met to sew the dresses. According to Memmo, “the event was held in the Honor Hall and all involved had a really fun time. Everyone got to learn more about sewing and it was so cool to learn about dress patterns.”  Lamb was impressed with the final creations, noting that “they were really bright, cute, and highlighted the different style interests of the club members.” 

Despite the success of this event, the student created dresses have not yet made it to the girls in Haiti due to transportation issues. Brinks explains, “COVID-19, obviously, is a big problem because of travel, but there is also a lot of political unrest in Haiti so it is not possible to visit and because of the political unrest and disruption, mailing things is very problematic. Right now we just have the dresses, we are not able to deliver them to anybody in Haiti, but the hope is that eventually we will be able to do that.” 

Along with hoping to get the dresses to Haiti soon, Murphy hopes that she “would love to have guest speakers, more projects, and more participation in school projects similar to the recycled materials fashion show that has previously taken place during Arts Fest.” Hendrickson  adds, “It would be awesome to continue doing community service projects as it allows members to learn sewing techniques while using their passion to help others.”