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By Marta Karpovich

On Thursday, March 7, SPSG Upper School students gathered in the gym for a sustainable fashion show run by Global Leadership Lab students Bridget Tucker (‘25) and Reese Flaherty (‘25).

The Global Leadership Lab is a two-year cohort-based class at SPSG in which students join forces to create passion projects that align with the United Nations’ 17 Global Goals. The students’ projects aim to bring awareness of these goals to the St. Paul’s community and create meaningful change within the school and beyond.

Bridget and Reese’s project, You Are What You Wear, is reflective of Global Goal #12, Responsible Consumption and Production. The project centers around sustainable clothing and aims to “make sustainable fashion more accessible and affordable through responsible consumption and production.” They plan to do so through educating the community on the effects of fast fashion and informing SPSG students about ways to make their closets more sustainable.

As part of You Are What You Wear, Bridget and Reese invited Patagonia representative Alicia Goodrich to SPSG to judge a sustainable fashion show. They asked Upper School advisories to design outfits out of recycled materials and would-be waste to model in the show, and students worked together on their designs for weeks. Advisories brought in cardboard boxes, used paper, grocery bags, trash bags and more to create their runway looks.

After all the advisories’ models had strutted down the runway in their recycled outfits, Ms. Goodrich chose a winner in each of three categories: most durable, most creative and most sustainable. The winners included the Louzan advisory, the Anderson advisory and the Du advisory.

Ms. Goodrich then spoke to the upperclassmen about why sustainability in the fashion industry is so important and reflected on Patagonia’s contribution to the fight against fast fashion. She noted how empowering it was to see young people working together to create a more sustainable future and encouraged the student body to continue being mindful about what they wear.

Reese and Bridget have shared ways to do just that. The companies Patagonia, Reformation, Unsubscribed and Kotn are just a few of the most sustainable places to shop for clothes, they said, in addition to thrift stores and other forms of upcycling. The pair will continue to do work with the community regarding fashion sustainability in the future.