4-H Fashion Review teaches skills, confidence
The 4-H Fashion Review at the Chaffee County Fair Thursday featured some unique clothing designs by this year’s six participants.
The two categories of the show were Clothing Construction and Decorate Your Duds. For Clothing Construction, students make the entire garment from scratch. For Decorate Your Duds, they start with a piece of new or used clothing and transform it into a different garment.
The goal of the fashion review is for students to develop an understanding of personal presentation in public situations. They plan, select and construct clothing that expresses their personalities. Learning poise and confidence is another part of their presentation preparation.
One of the most distinctive designs at Thursday’s show was Brittany Romero’s hi-low dress made of recycled magazines. Romero spent hours rolling strips of magazine pages, then sprayed them with water and froze them to hold the curl.
She attached a shiny black fish-scale bustier with adhesive tape and a backstitch. The belt was made of a fish-scale wave on top of ½-by-6-inch magazine strips. Romero said it took her several months to make the dress.
Another creative project at the show was Kyndra Johnson’s tailor-made collared shirt dress. Johnson started with an extra-large men’s button-down dress shirt, cut it into top and bottom, made new sleeves, bodice and skirt to fit her and added pieces of lace to the sides.
Johnson had the most entries in the evening’s fashion show with three different outfits. Out of the process of planning, creating and modeling, she said, “It’s all so fun, but the fashion show is my favorite part.”
Romero and Johnson were the two most decorated participants at the end of the night. Romero took home the grand champion ribbon for Decorate Your Duds and Johnson was grand champion for Clothing Construction.”
Sara Shannahan, Maya Magee, ShyAnne Tweddell and Kaylee Johnson also modeled their clothing creations.
Participants were judged on modeling, which included their clothing, grooming, facial expressions and body movements. Then Saturday they were judged on their construction techniques in an interview. They described to judges how the garment is cared for, how it fits into a wardrobe plan and their understanding of fabric and clothing styles and accessories.
The fashion review is a Youth-in-Action project led by coordinator Adrienne Weber. A leader in the local 4-H program for the past 16 years, Weber is currently involved with the “Imagine That!” club.
“I really believe in this program,” she said. “It gives the kids the opportunity to learn lifelong skills in sewing and design.”
Weber said she was sad to see home economics classes taken out of Salida High School and Salida Middle School in recent years, so she is glad the 4-H program remains.
“We would like to see an increase in participants in coming years,” Weber said. In the past the fashion program has had workshops offered for students that were taught by representatives from Fringe and other volunteers. This summer no classes were offered, which contributed to a decrease in participation.
Anyone interested in teaching a class can contact Christy Fitzpatrick at the Colorado State University Extension office, 539-6447.
“It’s great to see this wholesome program remain unchanged over so many years,” said Weber, “especially with all that’s going on in the world right now.”
