A dream about evaporation ponds morphing into a Yves Saint Laurent gown set off a two-year project bringing the shrinking Great Salt Lake to a sold-out runway show. Photographer Chris Carlson developed the concepts for a project featuring 21 handmade couture pieces, with student fashion designers from Utah State University and Salt Lake Community College contributing to the work. Each piece translates a different part of the lake's ecology, minerals, wildlife or landscape into wearable art. The results are scheduled to take the runway Saturday, Nov. 14, at This Is The Place Heritage Park.
Carlson had spent years photographing the lake's colors, wildlife and landscapes before the project, dubbed GSL Luxury, took shape, according to KSL. He has described the Great Salt Lake as a sacred place, and he developed the 21 couture concepts himself before handing them off to student designers to execute, per the same report. Each piece was meant to help people understand the issues facing Utah's largest body of water — an aim he has called keeping the lake in the cultural conversation.
From a Dream to the Runway
The idea reportedly came to Carlson in a dream around December 2024, in which the lake's evaporation ponds transformed into a dress by Yves Saint Laurent. That same vision had earlier roots: as The Salt Lake Tribune reported in June, Carlson gave each of the 20 student designers a $1,000 budget, with some flexibility built in because he encouraged them to work with natural fibers. He also founded a nonprofit, Future Folklore, to help raise money to pay the students, the Tribune noted.
One standout piece, inspired by the lake's evaporation ponds, used geometric patterns and colors that mimic the ponds' industrial footprint, according to ABC4. That outlet also reported in July that Carlson hoped sponsorships tied to the designs would raise more than $300,000 for lake preservation efforts ahead of the November shows at This Is The Place Heritage Park.
Months of Painstaking Work
Student designer Autumn Dohm said the project became a large production and a labor of love, per KSL's report. She described working painstakingly right up until the deadline, with some of the 21 pieces taking hundreds of hours to complete as designers spent months refining their visions.
Dohm said her creations were meant to represent the lake's beauty, its natural aspects and the importance of saving it, with a personal goal of raising awareness around the lake's environmental issues, KSL reported. Tickets to Saturday's runway show at This Is The Place Heritage Park have sold out, and organizers say the project has raised more than $250,000 to support Great Salt Lake Rising, funding that goes toward efforts to protect and preserve the lake.
A Lake in Crisis, and a Flood of New Money
The fashion project's fundraising push lands amid a broader scramble to rescue the lake, which has lost about half its volume over the past 30 years, according to a report from KPCW. That same report found three foundations or businesses had each committed $10 million to the Great Salt Lake Rising campaign, a philanthropic effort that launched with a $100 million fundraising goal, as detailed by Utah News Dispatch. The nonprofit Ducks Unlimited has separately pledged to raise its own $100 million for lake-related work, including invasive plant control and ecosystem projects, per the same account.
Carlson's fashion advocacy work isn't new. A 2025 report from KSL's Noon show detailed how his earlier photography exhibit, Preserving Greatness, had also become a book of the same name, with the collection viewable at the Roy Library. Carlson has said the original documentation project started with grief, after he began photographing the lake while his father struggled with Alzheimer's disease.
