As the Trinity Arts Festival (TAF) kicked off on Monday morning, Trinity Fashion Society (Fashion Soc) came to the fore. Off the back of the successful annual fashion show, the Persistence of Memory, Fashion Soc opened the festival with a distinctly more relaxed event, where students were more concerned with creating, than with appreciating fashion. Low chatter filled the University Philosophical Society (the Phil) Conversation Room in the Graduates Memorial Building (GMB), as students ambled in for Tote Bag Design.
The humble tote bag has been lauded as the latest craze on campus, both useful and stylish for throwing in your books, laptop, and the other essentials for a college day. Utility was far from the minds of the students at this event, however, excited to spend an hour at a calm and enjoyable event, designing bags to express their own personality and vision. At the centre of the room was a single, long table, lined with newspapers and laid out with both blank and TAF logo tote bags. Between them was paint, glitter, beads, ribbons, markers, glitter-glue, and sequins of every conceivable colour. In short, everything you could want to design your very own tote bag was provided.
Before the event got started, an attendee might have been concerned by their own lack of artistic ability, however, once things kicked off, it quickly became apparent that no artistic talent was necessary. All along the table, students were designing their own totes in whatever manner they pleased, some experienced artists with more complex designs, and others, myself included, enjoying themselves to their own standard. To look down the table was to enjoy a diversity of ideas, from flowers, to figures, to an unambiguous “Spicy” slogan and a prescient “Thank u, next”. The atmosphere was one of catharsis, a primary-school dynamic emerging as students, strangers to each other at the start of the event, were calling along the table to pass the glue, the glitter, the paintbrushes.
It quickly became apparent that the popularity of the event had been underestimated, however, with more and more students wandering in as time went on. Fashion Soc and TAF volunteers put out more tables, distributed more tote bags, of which, thankfully, they did not run short. Other materials were somewhat scarce, with the glitter glue running out lamentably quickly, but the budding designers shared amongst themselves and in the end, there was just about enough to go round.
As an early event for TAF, a festival designed to bring art and culture to the wider student body, the tote bag-design event provided a chilled out and fun opportunity for students to take an hour out of their busy, and often stressful, college life. For attendees, heading over to the GMB between lectures to do nothing more than put paint and glitter on a cloth bag provided a form of mindfulness, and an opportunity to unwind. In the run-up to reading week, it was a welcome escape from the pressures of assignments, labs and readings, and a thoroughly enjoyable beginning to the TAF.
