Elias Sitzmann had never sewn before. But while working out at the gym one day, the University of Arizona senior majoring in physiology was struck with an idea.
“I noticed people were wearing sweatpants with biker shorts,” he said. “I sewed the waistband of some biker shorts onto some sweatpants.”
He learned to sew shortly after, and within six months, he’d entered the early stages of launching his own line of activewear.
On Saturday night, models wearing his brand, Ari Everyday Wear, and designs took to the catwalk for the ninth annual UA Fashion Week show, with this year’s theme inspired by the music festivals that take place downtown.
Students involved in the show say, despite Tucson’s thriving music, stage and visual arts scenes, fashion as an art has been under-represented in the city.
For Sitzmann, that void comes with an opportunity to fill it.
“Fashion is just the next stepping stone for how beautiful Tucson is,” he said.
Despite the fashion community’s obscurity, said marketing major London Wood, the art itself is everywhere.
“When you walk in a room and you’re wearing what makes you you, people get it. And I think that’s very important, because you can say so much without saying a single word,” he said.
Briana Johnson, the show’s creative director and a junior studying science and technology in the fashion industry, said the theme was influenced by her experiences at the DUSK music festival and the Bear Down Music Festival, which took place the night before the fashion show.
The show was organized by the student-run TREND Fashion Event Board. Sitzmann said the board consisted of about 35 students from different majors who were united by their ambition and interest in fashion.
Wood, who is pursuing her master’s degree in the science of marketing and was one of the board’s most senior members, said it had simply started as a campus club for fashion enthusiasts.
Wood is also the editor-in-chief of the board’s online publication, “Catwalk Magazine,” which comes out each semester.
According to Wood, club members decided to up the ante about a year ago by forming a board, where students were selected through an application and interview process.
Wood, who was working on her last edition of “Catwalk” before passing the torch, said she was looking into avenues for physical copies to be printed.
Johnson said a few of the involved students had built their own clothing lines, and what they featured on the runway leaned closer to art than functional street clothing.
“Typically their clothing is a scaled-down version of what you see on the runway,” she said.
This year’s show was the first at the Mercado District, Johnson said. She’d wanted an off campus venue to make the show more accessible to the entire community.
Johnson likened the environment backstage to “Project Runway,” for all its chaos. Several of the students alternated between roles throughout the show, she said.
But the board’s attitude towards unhealthy beauty standards differed from those seen on “America’s Next Top Model.”
“We’re trying to foster an environment where anyone can be a model, anyone can be a stylist, anyone can be a designer,” she said.
As much as fashion is an art, Sitzmann said, it’s utilitarian. The medical school hopeful said he’d been searching for ways to combine fashion and health, and his most current project was designing a T-shirt that would improve the wearer’s circulation.
Wood said she’d been to plenty of concerts, but not a music festival, so she’d done online research to find inspiration.
She and her co-designer, Ariel Webb, drew their work from Y2K fashion, especially its DIY component.
All of their pieces had been thrifted or “upcycled,” from thrifted material. She said she’d also wanted to use her craft to reduce waste and combat the environmental impacts of the rising availability of fast fashion.
None of the pieces on the catwalk were pass produced, Johnson added, and several of the student designers were selling their work, making them part of Tucson’s economy.
“When you buy from a local business and from these students, you’re buying from people who put care into every piece,” she said.