Fashion
Miami Fashion Institute, part of Miami Dade College, partners with Montce and The Upcycle Project to provide hands-on sustainable fashion education, upcycling deadstock into innovative swimwear.
Updated 10:46 am EST, February 25, 2026
Published 01:29 am EST, February 25, 2026
Fashion Designers: Petter Rodriguez, Milena Cabrera, Deborah Melian, Franklin Torres, Hanna Mayorga, Endjy Joseph, Susan Clark, Milagro Garcia, Catherina Odette, Melissa Brouard
Fashion Styling: Dana Yurglich, Betina Bak
Hair & Make-up Artist: Emanuelle Duarte
Model: Ari H
Modeling Agency: Posche Models / The Walk Collective
Producer: Flávio Iryoda
Photography: Oscar Tabares
Photography Assistant: Jeremy Robinson
Videographer: Jesús Molina
Backstage Photographer: Matthew Castano
Special Thanks: Oscar Lopez
Miami Fashion Institute, part of Miami Dade College, partners with Montce and The Upcycle Project to provide hands-on sustainable fashion education, upcycling deadstock into innovative swimwear.
Updated 10:46 am EST, February 25, 2026
Published 01:29 am EST, February 25, 2026
Fashion Designers: Petter Rodriguez, Milena Cabrera, Deborah Melian, Franklin Torres, Hanna Mayorga, Endjy Joseph, Susan Clark, Milagro Garcia, Catherina Odette, Melissa Brouard
Fashion Styling: Dana Yurglich, Betina Bak
Hair & Make-up Artist: Emanuelle Duarte
Model: Ari H
Modeling Agency: Posche Models / The Walk Collective
Producer: Flávio Iryoda
Photography: Oscar Tabares
Photography Assistant: Jeremy Robinson
Videographer: Jesús Molina
Backstage Photographer: Matthew Castano
Special Thanks: Oscar Lopez
Miami is a vibrant international city, with its will-o’-the-wisp lights enticing people to play and live along its famous Art Deco streets, beaches, and nightlife. One of the pleasures of the city is that, no matter the time of year, residents can dress in beach and resort wear throughout the year. So, it is unsurprising that resort wear in all of its glorious hues is de rigueur for most of us. But Miami always encourages its residents and guests to dazzle with some sense of panache. The result is that in Miami, resort wear can be just as beautiful as eveningwear. Additionally, given Miami’s environmental concerns, many garments are made with sustainability in mind.
Experiential learning allows students to move beyond theory and engage directly with the realities of the fashion industry.
Enter Miami Fashion Institute’s latest collaboration with the Upcycle Project and swimwear brand, Montce. The partnership with the three organizations presented a challenge for burgeoning designers, who were required to work with deadstock and “unusable” fabric options from Montce Swim. The purpose was to create stylish outfits for being outdoors and showcasing Miami’s design aesthetic. Miami Fashion Institute students were once again eager for this challenge and presented new, delightful outfits using fabrics that, at least initially, no one thought they wanted to use again.
By designing swimwear with donated deadstock fabric scraps from Montce, students gain hands-on experience while developing a deeper understanding of sustainability, ethical practices, and the responsibilities that come with being a designer.
Our ongoing partnership with The Upcycle Project ensures these projects are meaningfully integrated into the classroom, reinforcing the role of social responsibility in design and helping students understand that thoughtful, ethical decision-making is essential in today’s fashion industry.”
Miami Fashion Institute teamed up with swimwear brand Montce for an exclusive interview! We discuss how this collaboration is important for Miami’s fashion community. It displays an emphasis on sustainable practices that Miami designers are trying to normalize. It also opens up the door for fun and creative learning for up and coming designers. Montce is a Florida based swim brand that prides itself on producing garments that mold to your body and move with you no matter the flittering trends of the moment. More importantly, they love to have fun with vintage prints that allow their garments to stand out from the pack. Founder Ali Grief started out sewing custom pieces for clients in her Fort Lauderdale apartment. She worked her way up to where she is today, a true fashion darling. Her focus on perfect fit and high-end fabrics with creative cuts has gotten her there.
Gabriella Smith, another longtime partner of the Miami Fashion Institute, is the founder of The Upcycle Project. She is a super respected leader in promoting fashion sustainability and a great friend to the Miami Fashion Institute. Gabriella is so impressive since she is tireless in demonstrating that sustainability is the path forward, and she believes that using initiatives like this one can change the fashion industry for the better. Gabriella has long been encouraging companies and individual designers to upcycle textiles, which involves using secondhand fabrics as a base to create new materials or, frankly, to use older fabrics without modifying them in innovative ways.
She boldly pushes the industry to explore more groundbreaking ways of working that could re-create the current fabric lifecycle. Typically, fabric is used for a design, then purchased and ultimately discarded. Gabriella wants all of us to think more in a more circular fashion so that second-hand fabrics can find new uses and be loved once again by others. Her whole campaign is for the fashion industry to increase its ethical and sustainable use of fabric. A really admirable part of Gabriella is that she is determined to leave the world better than she found it. Thus, her educational efforts and collaborations are among the many ways to improve the industry and to bring the fashion community together to create a more positive future.
For this edition of the annual collaboration, Miami Fashion Institute students used deadstock fabric scraps to create high-fashion swimwear. It was eye-opening to see such beautiful clothes using fabrics that would otherwise have gone to waste. This challenge forced the students to think more with originality while reinforcing all the techniques they have learned in school. The school, Upcycle project, and Montce hope this experience can be adapted and used as a template for future brand collaborations. Their goal is to integrate greater sustainability and creativity into the fashion industry permanently.
Recovering from an obsession with Italian-designed menswear, Alfonso decided to take a deeper look into women’s fashion to see how our relationship among clothing, society, and business has changed. Educated as an economist with an MBA, he travels between Chicago, Miami, and Mexico on a search to see what happens next to fashion.
Get the latest fashion, culture, and art updates, including magazine releases release parties
Sponsored Content
