Every year the Norton High School becomes the undisputed fashion capital of Summit County for one day during its portable art fashion show.
This year two shows took place on January 24th, one for an enthusiastic amount of students and school workers and a later show mainly for parents.
About 100 students took the design and modeling of fashions with another 50 that help with music, lighting, stage management, decorations and organization, said JJ Thornberry, the art teacher who founded the show.
Thornberry said in an e -mail that the show began in 2019 after a lesson in the craft teaching plan, which was launched by her colleague April Levack. They found that the students were enthusiastic and commissioned by the project.
“… we both started the fashion show when we realized how much the students generally deal with portable arts,” said Thornberry.
When the popularity of the annual show began to grow, a portable course course was integrated into the curriculum for visual arts, said Thornberry.
With a free year due to pandemic, the show has continued to grown. The second performance was added in 2024.
“Last year there was a great answer,” said Thornberry after the morning show. “They asked me if I would do a Saturday show.”
The students designed and showed a variety of styles with different topics, with some concentrated on the environment.
Scarlett Alicea, who wore a dress decorated with paper money, said she started working on her outfit in June.
“(I) finished it yesterday,” she said.
She said she wanted her fashionable statement to be that money does not buy luck.
“I’m embodied greed,” she said.
Dawn Gurr, sister of art teacher Levack, who organizes the show with Thornberry, drove from the Columbus area so that her daughter Brooklyn Gurr could appear on the show.
“This is a huge production that takes months and months of preparation,” she said. “I am so impressed by the participation of the student body. I am impressed by the way the administration (supports this).”
Like Thornberry, she said that the event brings students together with interests who often compete or do not mix well.
Director Ryan Shanor said that the school’s 750 schoolchildren appreciate the event whether to take part or look at the fashion show.
“The children are working very hard on it,” he said. “The children work here every day.”
He said the second show last year was only standing room and he heard compliments weeks after the event.
Senior Brenna Bever said that she took part in the event every four years of high school in one way or another.
In the first two years she worked on outfits and modeled as a second year. She helped behind the scenes last year and was at the backstage crew this year.
“There is not really anything else … at school that brings people together as a collective (Sun),” she said.
Mallory Bird, who was awarded for her crocheted outfit, designed a topic by Sun and Sky.
“It took about 65 hours,” she said.
Isabell Zdicham wore a design that she described as a reversal of nature, with fire fell and water rose. You and two other students worked on the outfit and used recycled bottles to achieve the effect.
“I have the feeling that it is a shop window of her own talent,” she said.
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