Juan Silva fixes his hair in the mirror and tucks in his neon green shirt to his lavender flare pants. The colors remind him of Daphne from Scooby-Doo. He gravitates towards bright colors and likes to coordinate his outfit to how he is feeling.

As he lays out another outfit, he thinks about how the bright red and white remind him of racing stripes.

“I use fashion as my escape from reality,” Silva said. “I’ll use it to express how I feel about a certain topic. It’s my way to communicate with the world.”

He likes to mix colors, patterns and textures to create a new outfit. It is all about trial and error for him and there are no two colors he hasn’t tried. But reaching for bold color or new textures is not always as easy as it sounds. Which is why Silva is looking forward to SMU’s first Pop-Up Clothing Swap on March 31, organized by the Women and LGBT Center.

“I want people to be more open-minded when it comes to fashion and not necessarily put a label on what color goes with which gender or what clothing style goes with which gender,” Silva said.

Silva, a sophomore studying advertising and public relations, says he gets odd looks from others while shopping because he is not picking “manly” clothes. Silva believes the Pop-Up Clothing Swap will give students the opportunity to find self-expression through fashion.

Jermisha Frazier, the Women and LGBT center’s new coordinator, started the Pop-Up Clothing Swap to advocate for the LGBT community on SMU’s campus. Frazier wants to ensure that the Pop-Up Clothing Swap is a space that is free of judgment and stigma so students can feel free to pick out clothing that they feel aligns with how they identify.

“I’ve never met a shirt that says they identify as a cis man or a shirt that identifies as a cis woman,” Frazier said. “The Pop-Up Clothing Swap will be a space where we aren’t gendering our clothing where we aren’t judging individuals for grabbing something that we assume they shouldn’t or don’t need.”

Picking out new clothes isn’t the only way students can participate. They can also donate gently used clothes clothes through March 28. Boxes labeled Pop-Up Clothing Swap are located in the residential commons, Hughes-Trigg Student Center and several other buildings around campus. The Women and LGBT center will be washing and folding the clothes before they are given out to students.

All SMU students are welcome at the Pop-Up Clothing Swap, and they do not have to bring something in exchange for shopping. Students are encouraged to try new things to help them connect with fashion as a form of self-expression.

“Self-expression is not easy to come by,” Silva said. “Especially when you’re just starting out to try new styles.”

SMU students across campus and in the Dallas area are engaging in new and unique ways to contribute to their communities. This is a story reported as part of a Trailblazer series by students in Annette Nevins’ Feature Writing course in spring 2022.