Designing outfits in a limited time frame to meet the challenge of creating clothes and overall looks that represent aspects of pop culture sounds like a task that professional designers would take on for a reality television show. Students in Western Wayne High School’s more advanced sewing classes took on this challenge for the school’s annual “CAT” Walk school-wide fashion show and competition. The week-long event took place from April 10 through April 13.
The event is called “CAT” Walk in honor of the school’s mascot the Western Wayne Wildcat. Mrs. Colleen Carmody, director of the “CAT” walk event, explained that she first began this type of student activity in a classroom with two students and two judges thirteen years ago.
Through the years the event has grown to a competition between student teams in her sewing classes that consist of four designers and three student models each. The teams were called Color Pop, POPKORN’EM, and Trending Now.
Color Pop consisted of the following student designers: Cailin Brown, Zoey Rosensweet, Kayla Fitzpatrick, and Abby Gogolski. Students models for Color Pop were Noelle Orehek, Rachel Roberts, and Bayly Williams. POPKORN’EM consisted of the following student designers: Madison Kornuitak, Emily Shaffer, Isabel Valentin, and Rebecca Saar. Student models for POPKORN’EM were Trina Barcorola, Caitlin Henneforth, and Scott Walck. Trending Now consisted of the following student designers: Gina Infante, Morgan Wagner, Bree Price, and Victoria Petrosky. Student models for Trending Now were Abby Black, Kallie Jones, and Matt Trygar.
Carmody presents the students with a theme to create their clothes around and five specific scenarios within this theme. Students have less than three days to create their clothes which are then judged in the school’s District Office and by the student body.
The Trending Now team won the competition overall.
This year’s theme was Pop Culture. One scenario the students had to create fashion for was called Pop News: Current Events in the News. They needed to create a two-piece outfit to represent a current news event within the year that dealt with weather, social issues, sports, celebrity, etc.
Their second scenario involved Pop Male Fashion. They designed a “summer suit” for guys that had a matching tie and shorts in bold prints. Another scenario involved Pop Female Fashion. They destructed and reconstructed a pair of jeans to wear in a fashionable and trendy way and redesigned a white tee shirt to match them.
For the fourth scenario called Pop: Food, Carmody challenged students to create an original outfit with textured fabric to capture a food, beverage, restaurant, or dining trend within the last year.
For the final scenario called Pop: Social Media, students created a dress with long sleeves and a large collar to represent a hot social media topic or event such as Instagram, Snap Chat, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Pictured are student designers and models. From left, seated: Bayly Williams, Scott Walck, Andrew Iovachinni, Matt Trygar, and Mike Maguire. From left, row one: Mrs. Colleen Carmody, director; Abby Gogolski, Abby Black, Trina Barcorola, Noelle Orehek, Madison Kornuitak, Emily Shaffer, Rachel Roberts, Kallie Jones, Victoria Petrosky, and Isabel Valentin. From left, row two: Rebecca Saar, Caitlin Henneforth, Cailin Brown, Kayla Fitzpatrick, Morgan Wagner, Gina Infante, Zoey Rosensweet, and Bree Price.
