PRINTFashion shows more than it seams
Designers create clothes that raise awareness of human trafficking
Chiara Della Cava
MU sophomore Jaclyn Marcacci wraps tattered strips of cloth around Kendra Walter.
November 8, 2007 | 12:00 a.m. CST
This season’s hottest fashion trend: philanthropy. Recently, the Gap and Giorgio Armani joined forces with the (RED) campaign, which raises awareness of AIDS/HIV and money for the Global Fund. And earlier this year, designers such as Steve Madden, Donna Karan and Gwen Stefani sold fashion on eBay as part of the Designers for Darfur fashion show.
With all this do-gooder energy in the fashion world, even local fashion designers are rockin’ the fad. On Saturday, local designers, models and dancers will be featured at the Stop Traffic Now Fashion Show at MU. The event’s theme is You Could Stop Traffic in These Clothes, but not the kind of traffic you face at Providence and Stadium during rush hour. MU’s Stop Traffic student organization planned the show, and the goal is to raise awareness of human trafficking, a modern form of slavery with millions of victims worldwide.
What: Stop Traffic Now Fashion Show
When: Saturday, 7 p.m.
Where: Memorial Union, MU
Cost: $7 - 8.50
Call: 882-4640
Paige Hendrix, co-founder of Stop Traffic, came up with the idea after hearing about another charity fashion show, and since then Stop Traffic members have brought together several organizations around Columbia, seven designers, seven dance groups and a posse of models who will pool their talents into the effort.
Jaclyn Marcacci, a designer and MU sophomore, says she had been looking for the right event to make her fashion show debut, and this stood out because of the cause.
“I think it is cool that they’re not only taking a stand against trafficking in general by doing a charity event and doing a fashion show but incorporating it into the theme, having the clothes take a stand as well,” Marcacci says.
A worldwide epidemic
“Human trafficking happens all around the world,” says Palwasha Khan, an MU student from Pakistan and a member of MU’s South Asian Student Association, one of the groups dancing at the event. “When I go home, I always hear about kids being kidnapped.”
Still, event organizers say many people only see human trafficking as a problem in countries such as Khan’s and don’t stop to realize it is happening here.
Hendrix and others involved in the fashion show say people are often surprised to hear that human trafficking happens in the United States and especially here in middle America. But in reality, trafficking affects more than just big cities such as New York and Washington, D.C. In May, 15 women who were being kept as slaves were found in Kansas City, where trafficking is becoming more visible.
And the problem doesn’t stop there. According to Kelley Lucero, outreach coordinator, sexual assault program coordinator and victim advocate at The Shelter in Columbia, human trafficking victims often pass through Columbia.
“I think it would be naïve to assume that somehow this wouldn’t happen here,” Lucero says. “And given that we’re on I-70, you know we’re the link between Kansas City and St. Louis. Who knows how many victims of anything pass through our town in a day?”
Lucero has helped several human trafficking victims in Columbia. Due to the nature of the problem, she cannot share the names of the victims, and logistics and language barriers keep many of them from reaching out for help in the first place.
But Lucero can provide shelter, legal help and moral support to the women who do come to The Shelter. “They feel humiliated,” she says. “It’s incredibly shameful. How do you tell family back home?”
Fashioning images of trafficking
In Marcacci’s small Columbia apartment, fashion has taken over. Shiny gold fabric takes its seat on the couch while black fabric and skirt patterns spread across the living room floor are waiting for her to transform them into a dress that will grace the runway at the fashion show.
Marcacci, who learned to sew as a senior in high school, designed three dresses that make up her line, Strictly Unrestricted. The collection represents the process of becoming a victim and breaking free from enslavement.
Her first dress is a smoke-gray, floor-length garment that has fabric wrapping around the midsection, which adds to the idea of restriction. Marcacci plans to tie her model’s hands in the same fabric. Her second dress is a similar style but in black. It serves as the transition dress to the third, a shimmery gold gown that represents a woman emerging from her shackles, beautiful and free.
Jacquie Palmer, a Stephens College ’07 graduate and fashion show designer, created a line that is also a
collection of three outfits. She is using
a fall palette because she sees a connection between trees losing their leaves and women losing their freedom.
“When a woman is being forced into something she doesn’t want to do, she is kind of dying on the inside for a little bit, but she is still beautiful,” Palmer says.
Palmer is incorporating her screen-printing skills into all of her designs. A print of a woman’s face and one of hands chained together will overlap on her burgundy and shimmering gold plaid dress, and the same print of a woman’s face will also be incorporated into a top layered with handprinted China silk.
Ashley Allen, an MU senior, has been working on her line for two to four hours every day. “I literally have only sewn for three weeks,” Allen says. She titled her line Priceless because she thinks a price tag cannot be put on human lives.
Allen is incorporating her two young nieces and a male model into the line to represent the children and men who are also being trafficked around the world. Her other idea is to incorporate words such as daughter and sister into her designs to make the issue more personal for people. She says, “If you think about ‘what if that was my niece or my sister or my daughter,’ I think it’s a little bit different.”
Awareness and education
The proceeds of the fashion show, to be held in Memorial Union, will partly go to The Shelter and also fund Stop Traffic’s human trafficking conference that will be held at MU in March 2008.
“Our goal is primarily to raise awareness but also to educate ourselves and others so that we can equip ourselves to actually do something about it,” says Stop Traffic president and co-founder Jennifer Kimball.
Those involved agree that the fashion show is a step in the right direction.
“Yeah, we’re only college kids, and yeah, we’re in the middle of the Midwest, and what are we going to do?” Marcacci says. “But somebody’s got to do it. Somebody’s got to take the first step, and somebody’s got to take the first stand, or else nobody will.”
