On a lamppost outside the Student Union, a poster with signage reminiscent of Charli XCX’s “Brat” album reads “JOIN SIQ Fashion.”

The group behind this poster is the newly formed UMass SIQ Fashion Club, founded by Harry Wright, a junior journalism major. While pronounced as ‘Sick Fashion,’ SIQ is an acronym for ‘Shape, Inclusive, Queer,’ as the club aims to “create a community where every icon has a place,” according to the SIQ Fashion Instagram account.

Wright’s own identity inspired him to create the club when he returned to campus this fall.

“I’m very queer myself, and I have a lot of friends who don’t fit the gender binary or who are very queer in their presentation,” Wright said. “I just really want to create a community and safe space for people to express themselves freely.”

Wright acknowledged the concept of a fashion group was nothing new to campus, mentioning that he is also a member and model for the UMass Fashion Organization. However, he felt there wasn’t quite a community where a diverse array of people could express themselves freely.

“I wanted to create a community for all people in general in fashion, and that was something I just felt didn’t really exist at UMass,” Wright said.

His idea for the fashion club sparked this past summer, and after brainstorming with family and friends, Wright’s vision began to take shape.

“Once I finally got back to campus, I knew that I had to make this happen, no one else was going to do this,” Wright said.

Wright created an Instagram account for the club and handed out flyers around campus. As evidenced by the quick growth of the club, Wright’s fervorous advertising has paid off.

“Our first meeting in French Hall, we had eight people, which were just my friends,” Wright said. “Once we started handing out flyers, we had 45 people in our next meeting.”

The club has shied away from the traditional e-board structure of most campus organizations.

“One thing I noticed about different clubs on campus is that our school regulates clubs to have a very specific hierarchy with an e-board, and from my experience with that formatting, it makes clubs exclusive,” Wright said. “It becomes like the e-board is the club.”

Hoping to avoid the hierarchical dynamic that can exist in organizations, the club has instead placed an emphasis on building a collaborative, team-based environment.

“The way we have it structured is that we have teams, and those teams are not going to have a single leader,” Wright said. “It’s just going to be people collaborating. I want this to be a space for everyone, and I feel like the second you start adding positions like ‘head of styling,’ ‘head of modeling’ and ‘head of social media,’ there’s no equality.”

According to Wright, the club may not even become a Registered Student Organization to maintain the cooperative nature of the club.

“It’s a very collaborative effort and it’s a great way for people to make their voices equally heard, especially in an inclusive space,” Em Turner, a junior anthropology major and assistant director for SIQ, said.

Members’ experiences with the club express what Wright has hoped to provide for UMass students. Lena Sakharuk, a sophomore kinesiology major, first heard of SIQ Fashion Club through a flyer.

“There are other fashion organizations on campus that I haven’t had the most welcoming experience with,” Sakharuk said. “By having a club that specifically focuses on welcoming everyone, it just means the world to me, because all I really wanted was to participate, and I wasn’t really allowed to do that at my fullest capacity in the past.”

“We’re just here to lift everyone up,” Turner said. “A lot of people are here to just make friends and that’s perfectly okay. We don’t expect immediate die-hard involvement from all, we just want to have this space as an option for people to come if they need it.”

“I feel like fashion can be a very competitive space and a very exclusive space, and I hope that not to be the case at all. This is a fashion club for everyone,” Wright said.

For more information on SIQ Fashion Club, visit their Instagram @siqfash.

Ambika Joshi can be reached at [email protected].