Hub101, located at California Lutheran University’s Westlake Center, repurposed its startup incubator into a runway on Thursday, Nov. 20, for the finale of a three-day Sustainability Fashion Festival.
Cal Lutheran’s Steven Dorfman Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship hosted the second annual showcase from Tuesday through Thursday in Kingsmen Park and at Hub101. The festival consisted of a speaker panel of entrepreneurs in sustainable fashion, a clothing swap and styling workshop, and a fashion show showcasing upcycled looks.
Desserin Pereyra, community manager at Hub101, said the goal of the festival was to raise awareness on how to become a better consumer to attendees.
“Being able to see people in the sustainability realm will help you rethink your business operations or your plans on how to bring something into the world in a way that could actually be more sustainable or challenge the things that you’re already doing,” Pereyra said.
According to Pereyra, this year’s festival theme was “Re-script: Re-stitch.” She said the mantra represents “reshaping narratives through sustainable fashion,” in an effort to promote self expression.
“[The theme] speaks to how we can use fashion as a vehicle to rewrite or restate narratives that didn’t sit well with us, and we can change things or change the narrative through the fashions we wear, the fashions we consume or the fashions that we want to uplift,” Pereyra said.
Elaine Vo ‘25 said this was her second time participating in the festival. Vo said she was the lead in gathering partnerships, guest speakers and production work.
“In terms of my professional career, I love partnerships and creating relationships with people that I admire. I just feel so much appreciation for this community but also this event because it really brings everyone together,” Vo said.
Junior Sophia Cleofas, a business administration major and a marketing intern at Hub101, said she was in charge of the operations and communications with the festival’s participants. Cleofas said there was a selection process when choosing which vendors should participate.
“[The vendors] do have to prove to us how their business is sustainable. Whether it’s, like, the products they use, the labor that goes behind their clothes, or if it’s something that’s just ethically sustainable,” Cleofas said.
At the fashion show, poet and teaching artist Christian Perfas said he hosted the Sustainable Fashion Show for the second time.
“I think the show went great. I think everybody enjoyed it. I felt a little under pressure, but I felt like, performance wise, the routine [and] the hosting went really well,” Perfas said.
Jay Kurt, a drag artist and seamstress in the community, said they handmade the clothes that were displayed during the last part of the show.
“A lot of [the clothes] are made from just, like, fabric that was going to be thrown away. The white outfit is actually made of blankets,” Kurt said.
Kurt said their favorite outfit they created was for Flaco Paloma, another drag artist.
“[The outfit is] made out of a fabric that I’ve never worked with, and I would have never thought of making that shape, but for some reason it worked really well on him,” Kurt said.
For the fashion show, Cleofas said she partnered with Public Estrellas, a thrift store in Los Angeles, as well as students from Granada Hills Charter High School to model thrifted, upcycled and handmade clothes from the store.
Penelope Castro, a junior at Granada Hills Charter, said she was chosen to model for the show through her school’s Sustainable Style Club and has liked fashion since she was a kid.
“I always wanted to go to fashion school,” Castro said. “I felt a little silly at first, but honestly, after seeing everybody else go up, it made me, like, feel more natural.”
Cleofas said students customized their outfits through their personal shopping experiences.
“[The students] got a chance to shop there personally, borrow some clothes for the event to walk down the runway and style it themselves,” Cleofas said.