When I came back from Paris in August of 2018 I unpacked my treasures that I bought there. I love fashion and I love buying clothes in Europe. My big indulgence was a beautiful silky suit (you can see the jacket in the above picture). I normally don't wear suits, in fact I find them too confining and uncomfortable, and I also find them generally to be too uniform looking.
A couple of weeks later, the weather seemed to indicate that it might be time to turn over the wardrobe and in the process, I came across my old suits that I hadn't worn in years. I had bought them all in Germany in really nice stores. They were of extremely good quality and looked brand new (like I said, I did not wear them much, haha, only at trade shows and other business functions).
On top of that, I had just taught our careers course in May and June, where I had a stylist (Cindy Conroy) come in as a guest speaker in to give advice about putting a starter wardrobe together with thrifty shopping ideas.
All of these instances got me thinking of what might be in the closets of all those people (faculty and staff) at Humber, and I was convinced that many of them would have the same thoughts as me - great career wear in their closets that is not put to its best use (either because they too don't favour suits, or because sizing has changed or because the need - or desire - for new items has relegated old items to merely be closet fillers and thus they represented a waste of space), and yet they are too good to part with unless it's for a good cause.
So the idea was born in my head that I wanted to organize a career clothing drive for our Humber Community.
I sent out an email to various people, and immediately a great collaboration idea was born - Jennifer Dawson, program coordinator of the fashion management program, was asking if she could use that idea for her fashion event management course as their main group assignment! BINGO!!!
The students came up with the name "EcoCloset" and the rest is history. It happened twice already, and now Ignite has contacted Jennifer to see if they could use the concept to create a permanent career clothing boutique! I love how the dynamics at Humber fall into place and everybody chips in to maximize the benefit for the students!!!
I said "collaboration" earlier - I should detail who collaborated: It was HRT (my home at the time), who contributed cookies, and coffee and also the event set up, The Business School at the time through Jennifer and her fashion management students, several industry supporters of our fashion management program, our Career Centre who had a booth to give advice, and our Sustainability office who also had a booth.
Sustainability was a key focal point - besides providing students and staff with affordable staples in their wardrobe, we saved a lot of garments from going to waste, coffee and tea was only poured out if people brought their own mugs (or bought one of the ones that were collected by the students), and all proceeds from the sale of the clothing items went to Youth Without Shelter.
A couple of weeks later, the weather seemed to indicate that it might be time to turn over the wardrobe and in the process, I came across my old suits that I hadn't worn in years. I had bought them all in Germany in really nice stores. They were of extremely good quality and looked brand new (like I said, I did not wear them much, haha, only at trade shows and other business functions).
On top of that, I had just taught our careers course in May and June, where I had a stylist (Cindy Conroy) come in as a guest speaker in to give advice about putting a starter wardrobe together with thrifty shopping ideas.
All of these instances got me thinking of what might be in the closets of all those people (faculty and staff) at Humber, and I was convinced that many of them would have the same thoughts as me - great career wear in their closets that is not put to its best use (either because they too don't favour suits, or because sizing has changed or because the need - or desire - for new items has relegated old items to merely be closet fillers and thus they represented a waste of space), and yet they are too good to part with unless it's for a good cause.
So the idea was born in my head that I wanted to organize a career clothing drive for our Humber Community.
I sent out an email to various people, and immediately a great collaboration idea was born - Jennifer Dawson, program coordinator of the fashion management program, was asking if she could use that idea for her fashion event management course as their main group assignment! BINGO!!!
The students came up with the name "EcoCloset" and the rest is history. It happened twice already, and now Ignite has contacted Jennifer to see if they could use the concept to create a permanent career clothing boutique! I love how the dynamics at Humber fall into place and everybody chips in to maximize the benefit for the students!!!
I said "collaboration" earlier - I should detail who collaborated: It was HRT (my home at the time), who contributed cookies, and coffee and also the event set up, The Business School at the time through Jennifer and her fashion management students, several industry supporters of our fashion management program, our Career Centre who had a booth to give advice, and our Sustainability office who also had a booth.
Sustainability was a key focal point - besides providing students and staff with affordable staples in their wardrobe, we saved a lot of garments from going to waste, coffee and tea was only poured out if people brought their own mugs (or bought one of the ones that were collected by the students), and all proceeds from the sale of the clothing items went to Youth Without Shelter.
2019
2018
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