Photo courtesy of Ava Klooster
The current trend of thrifted and vintage clothes won’t be cool forever. Although we likely won’t be going back to fast fashion any time soon, upcycled clothes modified with new art and personal touch could become the next thing.
A couple of University of Oregon students are already doing it too. Sydney Tall is an advertising major and the person behind Yikes PDX. Ava Klooster is an art and technology major and the person behind Abstract Mind Society. Both businesses sell thrifted clothes, enhanced by their own custom art prints. Tall has a permanent booth at The Racks in the 5th Street Public Market, and Klooster sells at the Eugene Saturday Market.
School is a full-time job for both Tall and Klooster. The cost and flexibility of printmaking and printing on thrifted clothes allow them to keep going while being students and working on other projects.
“During the summer, I could spend 50 hours a week,” Klooster said. “Currently, I’m not actually really doing any. It’s really just when I have the time.”
Tall prefers to do all the work for her batches at once, spending a few days printing and finishing her clothes, and sometimes cutting new blocks with different designs. She does one batch a month during the school year, but manages more during the summer. Tall began printmaking in high school when she was introduced to screen printing by her art teacher.
Now she does her designs on woodcut blocks inspired by tattoo designs and street art. She finds a lot of meaning in seeing people wear her designs out in the wild.
“I would see people wearing my clothes out around Portland, like people that I didn’t even know, and I’d kind of stare at them and make them uncomfortable,” Tall said. “That was really cool.”
Klooster makes linocut prints, with the designs carved into linoleum blocks. She started putting her own designs on clothes six years ago by bleach painting them, but has been doing linocut since 2024.
“For my first print, I just got a starter’s kit from Amazon for linocut, and I did a tooth print,” Klooster said. The tooth print is a mainstay of her designs today.
Both Klooster and Tall said that community is what drives them to keep creating. Klooster said that she sells for the community, to support it and be a part of it, and Tall shared a similar sentiment.
“By sharing my art and watching people interact with it, I feel like I am accepted and appreciated along with it,” Tall said. “Yikes has helped me feel like I belong here in Eugene and it has helped me find more people like me.”
Sustainability is also important to Klooster and is a core principle in both businesses. It is always more sustain- able to put new designs on used clothes than new ones.
“I think repurposing things in general is very important in this day and age because there’s already so much clothing waste,” Klooster said. “I think it’s important for people to find ways to do the things they love in a sustainable fashion.”
Klooster and Tall’s businesses are just a couple of the many student-run businesses here in Eugene. They help keep fashion sustainable and push the cultural needle forward with their unique designs and styles.