Fashion is an outlet for expression, which is illustrated by clothing businesses in Iowa City. All it takes is a walk down the street where businesses display stickers, signs, and shirts promoting awareness for causes important to the Iowa City community to understand the relevance of fashion as a form of free speech in the city.
For Iowa business RAYGUN, staying true to their community holds particular emphasis. Although they have locations throughout the Midwest, most recently opening a location in Madison, Wisconsin, the company personalizes each shop to the surrounding community.
Samuel Benson, the store manager of the Iowa City RAYGUN, said because of the individualized feel of each store, each location caters to the city in order to remain community-focused.
“Rather than getting the freshest, newly built thing in the suburbs, we always go to these old brick downtown locations that are, oftentimes rejuvenated, sort of spots that have just been kind of crumbling,” Benson said.
RAYGUN stays most connected to the community by creating partnerships with university athletes and promoting them through the clothing.
Another business in the Pedestrian Mall in downtown Iowa City is Cielo, which takes pride in its Iowan and Guatemalan roots. Monica Ferguson, the founder and owner of the store, talked about standing up for one’s beliefs, especially as an Iowa Citian.
“I feel that taking a public stance as a business owner and longtime resident of the Iowa City area is important. I get a ton of backlash, but my late father taught me that integrity and courage matter,” Ferguson said in an email to The Daily Iowan.
Cielo means “heaven” in Spanish, and Ferguson named the store for her mother and grandmother, honoring her Guatemalan roots.
Southeast of the downtown is Crowded Closet, a nonprofit thrift store in Iowa City. Founded in 1978 by five Mennonite women, the store has a voucher program which partners with various nonprofits including CommUnity Crisis Services, a food bank in Johnson County that also offers financial assistance to their clients, and provides Crowded Closet vouchers so people who qualify for assistance can acquire clothing, sheets, kitchen supplies, etc., from the store.
One of the founders, Marlene Leichty, still serves as a volunteer with the organization and is someone with whom Director of Crowded Closet Amy Hospodarsky frequently talks.
In addition to aiding the local community, Crowded Closet raises money for the Mennonite Central Committee, a relief-based organization that donates money to war-torn or disaster-stricken countries.
“You saw a lot of nonprofits formed in the ‘70s that were kind of born out of this desire to play a role in social or global change,” Hospodarsky said. “In a lot of ways our mission both in assisting with relief globally and domestically as well as investing in reducing waste and giving things a second life, it’s more relevant now or as relevant now as it was then.”
Although Crowded Closet doesn’t donate directly to these efforts, the Mennonite Central Committee states they do work in more than 40 countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and both North and South America.
Closer to home, on the University of Iowa campus, officials say that meeting the basic needs of the campus community is very important. UI Basic Needs Coordinator Stephanie Beecher oversaw the Clothing Closet, a project that has been temporarily paused due to the Iowa Memorial Union Renovation project.
The Clothing Closet operated alongside the Food Pantry, intending to provide professional attire to students, but once the renovations began and they lost a storage room on the second floor, Beecher had to make a choice which basic need to prioritize. The Clothing Closet was partially converted into a food storage room for bulk food items.
Beecher said students would still be able to acquire basic clothing items if need be: socks, underwear, and winter coats. For three years, the program has hosted a coat drive to acquire winter wear for UI students.
“We’ll still do a coat drive in conjunction with us buying [clothing], because that’s, I think, our duty is providing basic needs – that we have enough and we have dignified options,” Beecher said.
According to an assessment report sent by Beecher, the total combined clothing items distributed for the 2024-25 academic school year totaled 3,131 items; in Fall, 2024 that number was closer to 2,000. The number of distributed new coats for the winter coat drive totaled 225.
The Clothing Closet does not have a set reopening date, but Beecher has been told it will take about one-and-a-half to two years.
“Professional clothing is definitely part of the undergraduate, graduate experience of getting a job and those next steps, but can we be innovative in ways that we help meet the need that doesn’t take up as much space,” Beecher said. “Space is definitely at a premium right now and we want to be very intentional on how we’re using [it].”
Also dealing with local impact is Wright House of Fashion. Fashion Coordinator Lexis Wells said Wright House of Fashion has a goal of engaging with and aiding the community. Back in 2022, she worked with founder Andre’ Wright to establish Beyond Fashion Fest, a festival designed to engage with young people in the community.
“I know a big goal and motivation is keeping kids out of harm’s way and off the streets,” Wells said. “Wright House is that space, whether there’s after school classes or they even just need a safe space to come hang out and learn some things.”
Wells said she has displayed some of the kids’ work at Beyond Fashion Fest and even included them in the fashion shows to show off their designs. For Wells, fashion is a good outlet for expression due to its thought-provoking potential.
“Especially on a grander scale like red carpets, even if somebody on the red carpet gets kicked off the carpet for wearing something loud or extremely political, it’s still going to be photographed,” Wells said. “Using fashion as a way to kind of share your narrative and spread awareness, I think, is really important.”
Wells said Wright co-founded a fashion activism brand with abolitionist Jason Sole called “Humanize My Hoodie.” It was inspired by the deaths of Black kids due to gun violence, and how the kids had been wearing hoodies at the time of their deaths, leading to stereotypes.
“‘Humanize My Hoodie’ is meant to kind of think about the person wearing it before judging,” Wells said.
For companies such as RAYGUN, Benson said promoting awareness for issues goes hand-in-hand with their goals: to make people laugh. Some of their clothes portray short quips having to do with the city, such as a shirt reading “Iowa; great colors. easy to spell.”
Others are more pointed, such as a sweatshirt stating “Don’t tread on me” with a graphic of a national park ranger hat inspired by Brian Gibbs, a park ranger who was laid off earlier in the year when many other national park workers were also being terminated.
This campaign also included sweatshirts and other mediums, such as coasters and koozies that stated “America needs national parks,” with a portion of sales from those shirts being donated, according to RAYGUN’s website, to organizations the company supports.
RAYGUN also puts messages onto some unconventional products, from shot glasses to ornaments; as Benson said, the more media with a message, the better.
RAYGUN often seeks partnerships for their politically-minded merchandise, similar to the ones they create with athletes, where they donate a portion of their profits to an organization that aligns with their views.
In the case of “America needs national parks,” donations were given to the Environmental Law and Policy Center, a Midwest environmental advocacy group.
Other causes RAYGUN contributes to include LGBTQ+ rights, housing projects for women and children, and mental health resources.
As for business owners such as Ferguson, designing and selling merchandise aligning with her views is vital. She designs tees in support of feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, and to benefit shelter dogs, as well as tees with graphics denouncing fascism.
“Fashion is a language. As a Latina business owner, I feel compelled to speak out about the horrific ICE arrests, racism, and homophobia,” Ferguson said in an email. “In this way, I seek to honor my ancestors and family, and protect minority groups.”
For RAYGUN, being active community members, along with physicalizing the messages they hope to spread, are of the utmost importance.
On RAYGUN’s website, there is a graphic that states, “We are community members first, and businesspeople second … We do this for the project, not the money.”
This graphic shows that when it comes to business owners in downtown Iowa City, who take pride in their beliefs by hanging posters and signs in their windows advocating for certain causes. Similarly, Benson talked about the prominence of making messages tangible rather than just words on a screen to be read while scrolling.
“It’s nice to have something in the real world, the physical world,” Benson said. “You can have all your messages online, but there’s an extra power to walking down the actual street wearing clothing on your body [that conveys a message]. It adds a little weight to it, a little strength to the power of the message.”