BU FaceAIDS hosts Condom Couture to raise awareness

Boston University Jacob Sleeper Auditorium was the site of fashion and glamour as well as public awareness Thursday night as FaceAIDS, an organization that works to fight HIV/AIDS and promote global health equity, hosted Condom Couture, a fashion show featuring dresses made of condoms.

BU FaceAIDS

Jeremy Meltzer, one of the co-founders of FaceAIDS, who now serves on the national student committee, said he hopes the event becomes annual.

“You can do 5ks, you can do bake sales and all that stuff, but it’s the same old,” Meltzer, a senior in Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. “We wanted to do something novel, something that hasn’t been done at BU. So Condom Couture is perfect, it’s almost like a national event for face aids and it’s also something that is good programing for BU.”

All the proceeds of the show go to benefit HIV/AIDs sufferers in Rwanda.

“The benefits from the show go to the national Face Aids office and that money goes to Partners in Health then it goes to programs in Rwanda by Partners in Health to help individuals with HIV/AIDs,” Meltzer said.

Meltzer said working on the event was fun and that the helpful response from organizations they reached out to was pleasantly surprising.

“When we started asking for donations for condoms, the Global Protection Corps responded to our email right away and were like sure we will send you 6,000 condoms,” Meltzer said. “So they sent us un-lubricated unwrapped condoms.”

The show is also working to destigmatize condoms and safe-sex culture, Meltzer said.

“The condoms are fun,” he said, while washing the lubrication off one in his sink. “You can make many condom jokes: 12,000 condoms, I’m always safe.  Silly stuff like that.”

In the future, Meltzer said he hopes to see more participation from males in the event.

“One of the goals was to get not only female designers but male designers as well,” he said.  “We have one male model, which is great, but it would have been great to see a fraternity do a seersucker suit or something because it’s safe sex and fashion. A lot of people don’t consider it a masculine thing, unfortunately.”

Creativity in creating dresses

Sitting on the floor of a suite in Student Village II surrounded by red and white latex condoms, College of Arts and Sciences sophomore Meredith Hoobler casually runs a condom through her fingers, trying to find the perfect place to glue it down.

“Latex is slippery,” she said.  “It does not like to hold stitches. It doesn’t like to hold still, it doesn’t like to keep itself under the presser foot of the machine.  We actually stopped sewing; it’s more super-gluing.”

Hoobler along with her friend and collaborator School of Management sophomore Emma Dwyer  designed the winning dress for Condom Couture.  Hoobler said she got involved as a birthday present to a friend.

“I [thought] ‘Alright that’s fine I’ll try it.’  Because how many times do you get to make a dress out of condoms?” said Hoobler.

Hoobler has been sewing since high school and considered going to design school before deciding on BU instead.  She said she enjoys getting a chance to sew again, but has never worked with a material like condoms before.

“Originally I was told I would be getting 1,000 condoms, which seems like a ton until your carrying a little bag around campus,” Hoobler said.

“Number one, paranoid people are going to ask you what’s in it. Number two, it’s not really a lot, like they are little so they seem a lot more numerically than it takes up space wise. [When] I got the bag, [I thought] this isn’t going to work, we have to alter the idea.”

Hoobler said the hardest part of making the condom dress was the time restraint.

“It’s time consuming,” Hoobler said.  “I didn’t realize how time consuming it was.  The event was in the planning so long, so there was less time for the designers to be working on the project, so it was a little stressful on my end.”

She also said her hands are paying the price of handling so many condoms.

“My poor fingers, every morning I work on it,” she said.  “There are little chips of latex super-glued to my fingers.”

Condom Couture

Upon entering Jacob Sleeper Auditorium, patrons of Face Aids Condom Couture were greeted with the musical stylings of Frank & Dependent, a Boston-based indie-folk rock band.

Outside the auditorium, tables were set up from sponsors of the show and free packets of condoms were available.  The crowd chattered nosily as they filtered in to find seats.

Joia Mukherjee, a Massachusetts General Hospital doctor who specializes in infectious disease, delivered an opening speech while wearing a tiara.

“This movement has been successful beyond our wildest dreams,” Mukherjee said. “Today we can say we can beat this disease.”

The hosts of the show were Liza Lott and Ms. Kris Knievil, two crude-humored drag queens and self-professed, “plus-sized princesses.”

Six models strutted down the makeshift runway, twirled for the judges and were playfully harassed by the hosts.

The fashion show was interrupted by a dance by Dheem, BU’s Indian Classical Arts Association, before the remaining models came out, including, the only male model.

SAR sophomore, Catie Tobin, came out second to last, modeling Hoobler’s design, which sported a long train.

Zach Robbiano, a SAR junior, said he came to the show because his girlfriend is in FaceAIDS.

“I thought [the fashion show] was great,” Robbiano said. “Really fun and causal, great [to promote] safe sex.”

School of Engineering sophomore, Nancy Neely said she had never been to a FaceAIDS program before and really enjoyed it.

“I thought it was awesome and way funnier than I expected,” Neely said.  “That was my friend who won so I was really excited for her.”

Ven Satyam, a CAS junior, said he is also friends with Hoobler and was excited to see her win.

“At first I wasn’t sure what to expect but I thought it was fabulous,” Satyam said.  “Of course my favorite part was seeing my friend winning, but I was a fan of the drag queens”