Trashion/Refashion Show 2016: The Phoenix

My kid has designed and modeled a garment in our town's Trashion/Refashion Show for SIX YEARS now. Here, I'll prove it to you!

Fairy Princess: 2011

Rainbow Fairy: 2012

Rose Dress: 2013

Upside-Down Orange: 2014

The Awesomes: 2015

And now, for 2016, I give you The Phoenix!

The photo above shows the basic garment that Syd and I sewed WHILE I HAD THE FLU. I am hard-core, my Friends! I later added a double petticoat made of sheer curtains from Goodwill and the sash from Matt's high school graduation outfit.

I did my best to recreate Syd's original design, below:

Syd's designs are always this detailed, but fortunately, she gets the fact that construction is a totally different ballgame, and feathers can't always be found at Goodwill, and vat-dyeing corduroy yellow apparently makes it turn green--we did lace instead of feathers, and a red velvet bodice instead of a yellow one. I'm not as pleased with it as I'd like to be, but honestly, I did pretty damn good considering that I had the flu!

Syd, of course, always gives it her all. Here she is practicing onstage the day of the show:

The red Converse that her grandmother bought her kill me with cuteness.

 Tricoci University (formerly Hair Arts Academy) students generously donated their time and expertise to do hair and makeup again this year; Syd's hair designer thrilled her by creating exactly the tri-colored, half-up/half-down impossible hairdo that Syd asked for, and although the makeup artist wasn't able to create the impossible (Syd really wanted this exact look, bless her heart), she did the red flames that Syd later had me fill in with metallic orange and gold, with gold accents:

Who knew that metallic orange would bring out the green in her hazel eyes?

 Syd did her own lipstick, of COURSE:

Every year, this kid amazes me onstage, and this year?

She amazed me:


When the audience starts to cheer so loudly for my baby that the emcee has to pause her spiel? Ugh, my heart can't handle it.

Unlike last year, when I had TWO kids in costume and thus didn't manage to get a single photo of them in the flurry of "stop touching your face, here let me get that smudge, please don't step on your cape, your boot is untied again, pee now so you don't pee on the runway," I actually managed to get several photos of my kid this year!

I did NOT say that the photos would necessarily be in focus, just that they would exist.

I even managed to get a good photo of sisters together--

--just before they started fighting:

And pics with total strangers! Yay!

And just like that, there goes another year of the fashion show. Personally, I am stoked to be done with couture runway design for another eight months.

Syd, however? I kid you not, in the scrum to exit the theater after the show, she began with her patented "I was thinking..." and then proceeded to tell me her design plans for next year's Trashion/Refashion Show garment. 

Something about pop tabs, I think, and silver lame...