Keeping Style Sustainable

By Saturn Williams Staff Writer

The second floor of Dudley Moorhead Hall was alive with chatter of nearly 100 students bustling into a small lecture room, lining up along the walls after all the seats had been claimed for the first San José State University Fashion Creatives Club meeting of the semester.

The club was created in September 2023 and its popularity has since then exploded. The club’s Instagram account, (@sjsufashionclub), has surpassed 2,000 followers in just a few months. According to both the club faculty advisor, Lecturer Fela Anikulapo Uhuru, and president, Alex McArdle, its leadership is looking for new spaces to accommodate the unexpectedly large meeting turnout.

“Our goal is to create a safe space where people can express their ideas, culture and creativity through the lens of fashion,” the club’s introductory Instagram post states.

Such unprecedented interest may reflect an untapped creative potential within SJSU. Many of the students attending the meeting mentioned wanting to pursue fashion and creative arts but were disincentivized by SJSU’s business-major-impacted campus.

The Fashion Creatives Club is already harnessing its popularity momentum into big project plans, such as a fully produced runway at the Seventh th Street Plaza and its very own club magazine.

According to a 2022 study by Simon-Kucher & Partners, a global consultancy firm, consumers are increasingly conscious of sustainability when choosing products, with Gen Z and millennials leading those demographics. As the rise of fast fashion brands like Shein intercepts this progressive mindset shift, fashion often sits at the center of discourse on labor, waste and environmental impact. In turn, each member of the Fashion Creatives Club provided unique perspectives on the ways they integrate sustainability into self-expression with what they wear.

“I think the Western world needs to think critically about how we, as a human race, are going to move forward when you think fashion, when you think of clothing, when you think about who’s making our clothes,” Uhuru said. “I think of our brothers and sisters that are out there in so-called ‘third world countries’ that are making these brand name labels for us, and they’re getting slave wages.”

Uhuru started thrifting when he was 16 and inherited his fashion sense from his parents, consisting of Black influenced styles from the ‘60s and ‘70s with their penchant for big hair, bell bottoms and bold, striking colors.

Since then, alongside his studies in anthropology, he has become an advocate for workers exploited by international corporations in the Global South. He reflected on the story of his brother, who was once slaved in a sweatshop in the Philippines, himself an eyewitness to the dire working conditions employed in the service of fast fashion.

“I feel like there’s something beautiful about used and worn clothing, clothing that has been lived in,” McArdle said about his own experience thrifting the vast majority of his closet.

McArdle walked around during the club meeting with the most extreme pant flare he could find. Sweeping the floor, he showed off his love for denim stemming from vintage American workwear. The business marketing sophomore hopes to center sustainable fashion in the club’s activities via clothing swap meets where members’ old clothes can find a new life, as well as sewing and design workshops to teach people how to repair and make their clothes themselves.

Psychology freshman Kokoro Phu wants to learn how to make their own clothes because they feel like their body type is unrepresented in the styles they want to pursue, specifically “provocative” clothing that emphasizes skin and silhouettes. Additionally, they hope to subvert the unsustainable consumerism cycle that has plagued fashion.

“I will always try to repair the things I do damage just so they can last longer and don’t end up in landfills,” Phu said. “Also I hate the fact that child labor is used because I do have family members who have experienced that and have shared their experiences with me.”

They also expressed distaste for how fast fashion has devalued the art and labor of making a garment.

“Especially with trends, everything is so in and out,” Phu said. “So I try not to follow trends because you’re just fueling buying something and then getting rid of it so soon because it turns over.”

Avery Cloward, liberal studies teacher preparation junior, said she learned from her aunt how to make clothing with crochet. She creates custom fashion pieces for herself, her loved ones and occasionally her own virtual thrift shop to rehome alongside her vintage finds. Called Avery’s Closet on Depop, the store is a menagerie of different decades in fashion, mirroring the way she mixes and matches styles in everyday life.

“We have enough clothes for lifetimes,” Cloward said, referencing the huge amounts of fashion waste that exists already. “In an ideal world, we would no longer manufacture new clothes.”

What one wears projects a certain im - age of oneself onto the world around them. Through that, fashion becomes a lens that can magnify art, identity, aspirations, one’s place in society and more. These vignettes only scratch the surface of the stories that are being told through fashion by the members of this club.

Thinking of the fashion-forward cities in the United States, San José might not be the first consideration when compared to the boasts of New York’s Fashion Week or Los

Angeles’ 107-block Fashion District. SJSU doesn’t even have a designated fashion program, but that won’t discourage this group of students from keeping this passion alive while empowering creativity, diversity and sustainability.

“I think San José is a melting pot of different cultures, ideas and people,” McArdle said. “And I think when that’s the case, fashion tends to flourish.”