On Saturday, June 16, "Trashion Fashion 9" will once again deliver in St. Petersburg a runway event full of "recycled couture."

  • ARTPool Gallery in St. Pete hosting event
  • ARTPool owner Marina Williams creative force behind event
  • 50 Tampa Bay area designers participating

What can you do with a random door knob, a broken cd and an x-ray?

"Trashion Fashion 9," or more specifically, ARTPool Gallery owner Marina Williams, holds the answer to this seemingly random query.

She greets us for this story in her vintage boutique wearing a tie dress. To be clear, a bunch of dude’s business ties as a dress.

"I've been recreating, reinventing and re-ensemble-ling traditional objects for many years,” explained Williams. "I actually made a collection from discarded or vintage ties."

Williams is the funky force behind the Trashion Fashion spectacle, now in its ninth year.

"I think it's just so cool to allow people the creative ability to reimagine and redevelop things that they have in their house,” said Williams. "This space is all about collaboration, bringing together all ages, all backgrounds, and letting folks showcase their talents and their designs."

Model-turned-fashion-designer “Sati” is one of 50 Tampa Bay area designers involved in this year’s show. Her dress today is a mermaid silhouette made from several different types of duct tape, those broken CDs we mentioned, plus that doorknob—it’s tucked away in her headdress.

"I've been a model for a very long time,” explained Sati, ”and all the discs that you see on this dress are filled with my old modeling pictures, so it's very special to me."

Designer Beth Joy, meanwhile, sports what she calls a post-apocalyptic pin-up look: a dress bodice made of woven x-rays and a skirt of round and curved x-rays, so the light can reveal the bones in the picture,

The head dress is the perfect mix of black netting, broken floppy discs and an x-ray cut out of a hand, sticking straight up in the air as though it was the feather accompaniment to the ensemble.

By the way, the woven bodice, placed over the heart? Made from the inside of an IPhone.

“Some people just use it until it's no good and get rid of it,” said Beth Joy, “I wanted to see what was inside, and it's part of her heartbeat."

This year's "Trashion Fashion" all-ages show begins at 8 p.m. The runway show starts at 10 p.m.