Paper or Prada?: Fashion designer creates newspaper dress to stand as testament to fashion, creative expression


Lashanda White-Owens

$20 worth of newspapers and a vision were the only things local fashion designer Lashanda White-Owens needed to create a statement worthy of rivaling fashion’s most eccentric icons.

Lady Gaga may have ridden into the 2013 American Music Awards on a fake white horse in a Versace dress, but even the fashion legend herself has never worn a dress made entirely of newspaper and tape.

White-Owens, a Noxubee County native, moved to Columbus in 2009. She worked briefly for a construction company before devoting herself to her husband, children and passion for sewing.

“I’ve been sewing for six years now,” White-Owens said. “Two years ago, I took it more seriously and started making handmade fashion.”

As a young fashion designer with a knack for entrepreneurship, White-Owens opened her business, Luxe Code by Shun White, in 2019.

With a new space to create and plenty of ideas, she immediately jumped into creating creative lines of women’s clothing.

For the past three years, she has been working on designing and promoting her business until a Facebook post three days ago changed everything.

Dress by model Tamaka “LilJones” Jones, designer Lashanda White-Owens, by Commercial Dispatch Newspapers. Photo courtesy/Mayfield Photography

On Monday, White-Owens uploaded a series of images to Facebook from her latest fashion design. Model Tamaka “LilJones” Jones — owner of Salon 220 — stood outside The Commercial Dispatch styled in the visionary’s latest creation: a newspaper dress meant to double as a statement piece and a self-penned article.

It didn’t take long for the avant-garde dress to catch the attention of both the Columbus community and The Dispatch. The post has garnered hundreds of likes and comments, along with dozens of shares.

“It was shocking and surprising,” she said. “Everyone was congratulating me because they thought the footage was a genuine article that had been published.”

The particular idea to fashion this dress came to White-Owens when she found a recent copy of The Commercial Dispatch. What she found in the contents of each page was a world of potential – an opportunity to transform one work of art into another.

“Fashion is my passion. I was looking through the papers and saw there was no fashion section in the paper,” White-Owens said. “There’s entertainment, news and lifestyle, but no fashion.”

Determined to include fashion in the paper, White-Owens took it upon herself to “write her article” in an unconventional way. She enlisted the help of Jones and Mayfield Photography before embarking on a quest to create the dress.

“One random day I was like I wish I had an article and I just reached out to Mayfield and Jones and put it (the concept and filming) together,” White-Owens said.

With a model and photographer acquired, the young designer had everything she needed to realize her vision. Everything but the dress of course.

Giddy with excitement, White-Owens began weaving her masterful web. She sent her husband to buy as many newspapers as she could with a $20 bill, measured Jones’ waist, fashioned a skirt out of polyester, and began folding and crumpling each newspaper until it was folded.

“It was a lot of folding and taping, folding over tape down, folding and taping until it all came together and I put it around her,” White-Owens said.

Once each paper was properly folded, she glued them around the silhouette of her model. The stylish testament to fashion and journalism took just two hours to complete.

“I think she knew I would be able to jump into her vision. “She’s so creative and I think she knew I would be able to bring the vision to life,” Jones said. “I didn’t know what I was wearing. I just fit in and helped her vision come together.”

Dressed in a paper vision of beauty, Jones posed for Mayfield in the dress and soon the three were uploaded to Facebook, and the rest is history. Well, quite a recent story.

Since the post gained popularity, White-Owens has seen more attention directed towards her business and hopes to use her ideas in the coming years to take her brand global.

“A lot more attention has turned to my business since the post went up,” White-Owens said. “We haven’t had anyone reach out yet about a partnership or anything like that, but we’re definitely getting a lot more attention (on social media).

The outfit will be a testament to the endless potential of a creative mind and a subtle quest to revive newspaper fashion.

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