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Home > Featured Stories > International Connections > November 2007 > Changing the World One Stitch at a TimeChanging the World One Stitch at a Time
I want to start a revolution. That's what this is all about.
NC State University junior Mor Aframian
MorLove founder Mor Aframian
By Chad Austin, News Services
Mor Aframian is out to start a revolution - one recycled garment at a time.
Aframian, a junior in the NC State University College of Textiles, has turned her love of fabric and fashion into a way to help impoverished children around the globe.
Through MorLove, the student group she founded, Aframian and others put a new spin on "going green" while continuing to raise social awareness. Starting with previously worn clothing, the group creates new apparel from the material and then sells it, with proceeds benefiting a Ugandan orphanage for abandoned babies.
"I wanted to create a program where students could grow as designers and use their skills to be environmentally conscious and help people around the world," Aframian said. "They are doing something they love and something that is rewarding at the same time."
About 25 students are involved in designing the new clothing creations. Pants might be turned into a skirt. Bed sheets might be used to make a dress, or a sweater might be unraveled and knitted into a tablemat. Nothing is off limits.
"There aren't any boundaries," Aframian said. "Whatever you can make out of an old fabric, you can do it."
The group has sold some of its creations on the Brickyard as well as in Beleza, a boutique in Cameron Village that devotes a section to fashions created by College of Textiles' students.
Students are working to raise awareness for MorLove and help in other ways beyond recycling clothing. A clothing drive held last spring to benefit an impoverished school in Madagascar brought in donations reaching well beyond the coat rack - books, school supplies, shoes and bed linens helped make up the seven tons of donated goods sent overseas to the school and to needy families.
Aframian said the response to her idea of helping others through refashioning clothing has been overwhelming. And in true "pay-it-forward" fashion, she believes helping children will one day cause them to want to help someone else.
"If you start when they're young, they'll see that somebody changed the world for them, and they will want to change the world for someone else," she said. "One person does something good for another and eventually, it keeps growing, and growing, and growing.
"I want to start a revolution," Aframian said. "That's what this is all about."
