16-year-old Lauren Hofschneider’s gown, adorned with white and yellow trash bags, was accentuated with a hat made of poster board and gift wrappers and footwear made from foil and saran wrap stockings designed by Vinni Orsini.
Hofschneider carried a garden umbrella made of wire hangers and trash bags, with a base fashioned out of wrapper tubes.
“I’m so happy and excited to win and I hope there will be more contests like this in the future,” she told Variety.
Orsini said he was shocked and excited to know that his creation won first place.
“I spent about two weeks fashioning recycled materials into Hofscneider’s gown, and I’m so glad we won,” Orsini said. They won third place during the recycled materials fashion show at their school last week.
Hofschneider used the same gown but with alterations and more ornaments for the fashion show yesterday.
It was Hofschneider’s first time to join a fashion show and Orsini’s first creation. Together, they won first place.
Second place winner Alyssa Legaspi’s Angel Barbie gown designed by Jim Libut was a newspaper and trash bag-woven dress bonded at the back with a yarn corset and fastened by soda can pins. Legaspi wore jewelry fashioned out of floppy disks, old keyboard keys and CD’s and a gladiator-like sandals made from cardboards, floppy disks and yarn. Legaspi wore wings designed from milk cartoons and cardboard.
Third place winner Keena Ta from GCA sported a Mourning Barbie gown designed by Joice Santos and suited for going to funerals. Ta’s ruffled tank dress made out of trash bags was accessorized by hair piece and gloves from recycled nets and stockings, while her jewelry was created from rolled strips of paper. Ta’s footwear was actually an old pair of slippers and braided strips of plastic yet it gives a modern look.
Made Onni of Saipan Southern High School romped off the stage in a sizzling cocktail dress which is her own creation. The gown is made of black duct tape for the corset and white trash bags for the skirt, pieced together diagonally designed black duct tapes.
Mercy Palacios of Saipan Southern High School wore a winter wonderland gown made of clear duct tape, bottle caps and trash bags, accentuated by a headpiece made from recycled music sheets designed by Megan Ito.
Judges for the contest were Beautify CNMI president Cinta Kaipat, Fran Castro from the Division of Environmental Quality, and Sharmaine Casquero.
“I hope we will have more events like this to encourage others to go more into recycling because we can fashion many beautiful things from it,” Kaipat said. The contestants were all from GCA and SSHS.
Fashion show organizers Manny Borja, Janine Nogis and Olivia Tebuteb of DEQ said the short span to prepare probably hindered other schools from participating.
