ArtPop gives new life to fashion from recycling

WILL WHITE

Will White is the VIP designer for the 2025 ArtPop Upcycled Fashion Show on Sept. 6.

ArtPop turns billboards into fashion.

ArtPop’s annual Upcycled Fashion Show and fundraiser will be held Sept. 6 from 6-9 p.m. at Blume Studios, 904 Post St. Tickets are $161.90, or $215.26 for VIP.

Upcycled fashion reduces waste by repurposing discarded materials and turning them into sustainable pieces. ArtPop Street Gallery does it by taking material used on billboards to highlight local artists and their businesses and giving it to designers to create unique pieces of fashion.

“We want to kind of make fashion more cyclical than it is because we only have one earth, we have to be kind to it right and so a lot of the fashion waste that's been happening because of fashion becoming a thing has really affected our globe in not the greatest of ways,” said designer Will White, this year’s VIP designer. “There is a concerted effort to make sure that we are not just throwing things out and casting them to the wayside but being able to creatively reuse these things to live a longer life and really get the most out of the textiles that we create.” 

White shares that unconventional material like billboard vinyl creates a test of design skill. 

“You watch shows like ‘Project Runway’ and you see the unconventional challenge,” he said. “I feel like what it does is it presents us with a challenge that we might not have normally walked into, but you learn certain skill sets and qualities about your practice that you can then relay into your other commission work.”

The show is in its fifth year but the inspiration behind it started 12 years ago. During a class hosted by ArtPop, artist Flavia Lavatelli made the first upcycled dress out of her own billboard. 

“The first time I saw it, I said one day that is going to be what we do for a fundraiser and we're going to have a fashion show,” said Wendy Hickey, founder of ArtPop Street Gallery. “It took a while, but now we're in our fifth year.”

The show has grown since debuting at the Innovation Barn with just 100 people to selling out shows with 400 people in the hangar at Charlotte Douglas International Airport. 

“It was modest, and it was lovely, but you could see the people interacting with the models and the designers and we knew we were creating something special,” Hickey said. 

ArtPop's mission is to give local artists a platform to express themselves and be seen. 

“We hope what comes out of that is our community wants to hire these designers, wants to create fashion with these designers,” Hickey said. “Charlotte regional artists can do anything. I want to make sure that our community sees these people and doesn’t hire from other cities. There is no reason to go outside of our own backyard because these artists can get it done.”

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