CREDIT: SYDNEY BAILEY
First year Fashion Merchandising students put their pieces on display at the Weightless fashion show on March 27. This year’s theme was outer space.

Fashion Merchandising students put on a fundraising intergalactic fashion show on March 27. Proceeds from the annual show will benefit local charity Itsy, which provides financial relief to families with children in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the Children's Hospital here in London.

“Our students... they're the future so it was the opposite side of the spectrum of these little babies and these students that are graduating and becoming adults themselves,” said Fashion Merchandising instructor Linda Jenken. “It's been really exciting to see how the charity's grown and how the students have been a big part of helping that.”

The charity grew out of Laurel and Matt Lunnen's own experience with a preemie in the NICU.

“[The Lunnens] started Itsy based on their own situation having a baby in neonatal and Laurel was working at Fanshawe at the time,” explained Jenken. “She was working here in the office and [I] was talking to her a little bit about it and thought it would be a fabulous to start something that's a very grassroots relationship.

“Itsy covers costs like groceries, babysitting, parking — which is astronomical at the hospitals. With the money that we've raised in the past years ... we did actually buy some equipment for the neonatal [ward].”

This year, the show was called Weightless with a focus on outer space — a current trend in fashion and media.

“I always look for something that's on-trend,” said Jenken. “I think space being very prevalent in a lot of conversations and even the movie Gravity being up for several Academy Awards, I thought it was very fitting.”

Probably the most interesting aspect to the show was that each garment is made of recycled material only, which posed a challenge for students.

Second-year student Sara Haney explained how difficult it was, but that the results were “absolutely beautiful.”

“The cool thing is that [the garments have] been made out of completely recycled materials,” she said. “They don't look like they've been made out of recycled materials — they look like something completely new.

“There's hula-hoops being used, yarn... anything you can think of under the sun,” Haney said. “They look amazing. The colours are great.”

Not only did the show feature creative designs by students, it featured some very special models.

“[The audience saw] fashion like they've never seen before ... Each individual garment is unique and innovative in its own way,” said Jenken. “We also have our preemie models; we have children on the runway that were all preemies and are thriving and doing really well today.

“It's wonderful to highlight our program in showing both our first years and graduating students.”

To learn more about Itsy or to donate, visit itsy.ca.