Imagine a future in which an extreme shortage of resources has made the concept of sustainability permeate all levels of people’s lives – including what they put in their closets. No longer a mere buzzword, sustainability has become a survival necessity. Responding to the demands of a changing world, a group of designers have come together to create a fashion house that uses only recycled materials by collecting other people’s trash to create their own fashion treasures.

Designers responded to this premise when they created pieces for an upcoming fashion show, the Green House, put on by the Registered Student Organization RUNWAY. The show is entirely student-run and will be held Oct. 18 at 6 p.m. in the Illini Union Rooms A, B and C.

To create their ensembles, designers pieced together recycled materials, crafting outfits out of magazine pages, garbage bags and egg cartons in place of denim, chiffon and satin. Far from the scratchy, shapeless sacks one might imagine would result if traditional textiles were forbidden, the designs are fully wearable, tailored and embellished with colorful details.

“It’s nice to see students at the University doing this,” said Rachel Drum, an Urbana artist who made four pieces for the show. “They did a good job of giving guidelines.”

Drum is a self-taught fashion designer and has been fashioning thrift store finds into new pieces. She made two apparel items for the Green House show: a shirt made from a trash bag and tape and a dress made from plastic bags with egg cartons as buttons and tissue paper as the skirt. She fashioned a ring out of a piece of car window glass and a necklace out of a CD and twisty ties.

“It’s hard because you have to be very gentle,” Drum said. “I found that needle-work was out of the question. You have to sew without a needle.”

Pooja Desai and Aramide Odusanya, sophomores in LAS, founded RUNWAY last spring. When the girls, both lifelong fashion worshippers, arrived on campus as freshmen they found that not a single RSO was dedicated to producing a high-fashion runway show. So they decided to take it upon themselves to bring couture to campus.

The Green House show is intended to raise money and establish the group’s reputation in preparation for an even larger-scale show in March, which will showcase the collections of up-and-coming professional designers. The group’s proceeds from its March show will all go to charity.

Before Desai and Odusanya had conceived the concept of a futuristic, “green” runway show, they got the group’s momentum going by recruiting other fashion lovers to help them with the creative and organizational work that goes into planning a fashion show.

In their early planning stages, the group tracked down hair and makeup artists and collaborated to create a cohesive vision for the show.

This summer, Desai and Odusanya pitched their show’s theme to designers in Chicago. Back on campus in the fall, the group recruited students to make pieces for the show – some with design experience, others with little or none.

Desai and Odusanya presented designers with guidelines.

“(We wanted the designs to be) avant-garde and whimsical,” Odusanya said. “Then we left the designing to the designers.”

Desai and Odusanya designed pieces for the show themselves and recruited eight other designers, five of whom have professional design experience and three of whom are students.

Janelle Pleasure, an Urbana fashion designer, designed six pieces for the show. She spent seven and a half hours on one gown made from old curtains and duct tape. Another, a last-minute request, she did in only an hour and a half.

“I think it looks (awful), but everyone seems to like it the most,” Pleasure said. “Once you have a concept, everything seems to fall into place. It’s just a matter of sticking to the concept and editing.”

Pleasure has made non-fabric dresses for several shows, but each time she has to deal with new challenges that arise with using new materials.

“I started out sewing, but the needles got stuck. I broke a lot of needles,” Pleasure said. “So I attached the dress to the dress form, then cut slits.”

At the dress rehearsal, the ensembles, which included dresses, bathing suits, jewelry and hats, were laid out flat on the ground, like life-size paper doll clothing. Models were directed to the outfits they were going to wear and tried them on for the first time, sometimes with the help of several people.

Many pieces appeared to be made of cotton or tulle, but only upon closer inspection was it evident that they were, in fact, made from different unconventional materials.

Maddy McGuire, a sophomore in FAA, fashioned a dress out of white plastic garbage bags, which she collected from the janitors in her dorm. She wove the bags together with a homemade loom to make the bust of the dress. McGuire said she used about 20 to 30 bags and spent five to 10 hours on the dress, finishing it in about a week.

Other pieces made a more immediate statement. One designer used a Forever 21 bag – an emblem of consumer culture – as the top of a dress.

The pieces had been fashioned without knowledge of the girls’ measurements, and many were in need of finishing or editing to fit the models. Pleasure continued to adjust her designs on the models, wrapping tape around the bust of one dress while the model stood still.

“My dress is comfortable, but it needs a little editing,” said Paula Chuchro, sophomore in Business, who is modeling in the show.

The group recruited models this fall when they had a general sense of how many pieces they would showcase on the runway. Of the 40 to 45 girls who showed up for the model casting, 24 were accepted to walk in the show.

The judges at the model casting looked for girls who were tall and who knew how to walk in heels.

“She needed to have a runway walk, not a personality walk,” Odusanya said.

The show will feature live entertainment: a Book By Its Cover, a cover band; Floor Lovers Illini, a break dancing troupe; and Organic Flow, a rock and hip-hop fusion band.

“You will definitely be shocked,” Desai said. “Nothing like this has ever occurred here.”