The mood at the 4-H Sustainable Fashion Club’s final showcase was celebratory. Taylor Swift drifted from the speakers while guests enjoyed sprinkle-topped cupcakes. Five colorful garments stood on dress forms as parents, grandparents and other guests admired the fashions.

Samantha Alberts, M.A. ’24, established the club last fall for Tompkins County youth ages 13-18. The inaugural cohort included five middle-school girls. Alberts is a Ph.D. candidate in apparel design. She’s is using her experience with the club — along with feedback from youth and their families — to develop a sustainable fashion curriculum for grades 6-12.

“I want to see how teaching the sustainable curricula will impact youth,” Alberts said. “How does it change their behavior toward clothing and sustainability in general?”

For the showcase, the girls created half-scale garments using draping, sewing and natural dye techniques. Turmeric produced a delicately pleated yellow dress. A two-piece ensemble featured an indigo-dyed skirt and white blouse accented by bright colors created by pounding flower petals directly onto the fabric.

“There was a lot of creativity in this club. It was fun,” said club member Wilhelmina Howard. “I really liked working with natural dyes.” 

Members learned life skills such as sewing and doing laundry, and sustainable practices including reading clothing labels, understanding the impact of chemicals on garment workers, and making clothing purchases that are both climate- and fashion-forward.

Alberts used age-appropriate dialogue and open, youth-centered discussions to frame challenging topics: “We’re learning to make small impacts that you can talk to your friends about and the changes that we all can make.”

Over the course of the year, the girls formed a cohesive community. “Watching them work together and becoming a community was not my primary goal for the club, but still a really terrific outcome,” said Alberts. Several girls attend Boynton Middle School but did not know each other before joining. By year’s end, they’ve become friends. 

Posted on
05/27/2026
Author
Marisa LaFalce
Tags
Community Engagement, Sustainability + Society
Group photo

The inaugural 4‑H Sustainable Fashion Club, with club leader Samantha Alberts holding the purse. Photo by Marisa LaFalce

Students receive a guided tour of the Cornell Fashion and Textile Collection

Alberts gives a tour of the Cornell Fashion and Textile Collection including a private look at Ruth Bader Ginsburg's garments. Provided.

students pound flower petals with a rubber mallet

One of the Fashion Club’s favorite activities was creating natural dyes and making patterns by pounding flower petals onto fabric with a rubber mallet. Provided.

Two students pose with their dress form fashions

For their final project, club members created naturally dyed half‑scale garments. Photo by Marisa LaFalce.

Using teamwork to honor a feminist icon

 

The Cornell Fashion and Textile Collection opened a new exhibit this spring, “Fashioning Justice: Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’54 and the Power of Presence.” The club toured the collection, including a private look at Ginsburg’s garments. Alberts taught the youth about the Supreme Court justice’s trailblazing legacy, and together they created a purse inspired by the exhibit.

“Each of us had a different idea,” said club member Yarra Mau. “We took some from this idea, and part from this. And I think that it was really fun to work together on this project.” 

Their finished piece was a hand-decorated black purse with “We the People” painted on the side. It resembled one on display in the exhibit, though the girls had not seen that one before designing their creation.

Historical strengths inform programming

 

As a preamble to her sustainable fashion education, Alberts’s master’s thesis examined the history of 4-H clothing clubs in New York State. She interviewed 22 former club participants and leaders and reviewed archival materials thanks to a Graduate Summer Archival Research Fellowship.

Clothing clubs were once a vibrant part of 4-H programming, but they declined in the 1980s and 1990s as more women worked outside the home and retail clothing became more economical than home-sewing. A handful of clubs still exist across New York State. Alberts drew from her research to create her curriculum, updating some themes to make them relevant to today’s youth.

“My goal is to revitalize the club to support today's challenges within the fashion industry,” she said. “As adolescents begin working and spending money, how do they become more conscious and informed consumers?”

Over the first year of the club, Alberts periodically surveyed participants to build an engaging program that blended her curriculum goals and their preferences.

Alberts's work was supported in part by the Morgan Engaged Faculty Fellowship awarded to her Ph.D. advisor, Denise Green, by the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research. The fellowship, established through a gift from Rebecca "Becky" Q. Morgan '60 and her husband, James C. Morgan '60, MBA '63, helps Human Ecology faculty members translate research into community impact.

“This kind of ethnographic research really does require in-depth and ongoing engagement with community,” said Denise Green ’07, the Lau Family Associate Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design. “When you can develop rapport with young people and build those relationships, the kinds of things you learn from your research participants is incredibly rich.”

Green also led a 4-H Clothing Club in Tompkins County when she was an undergraduate at Cornell.

“There’s a lot of eco-guilt among this generation, so helping them to develop the tools and the skills to do something about it is empowering,” Green said.
 

Students work on screen printing We The People