Maria Alex and Maryam Muayad walked onto the McMaster University campus expecting classes, clubs and the usual Welcome Week chaos. They didn’t expect to meet the person who would become a best friend, roommate and co-founder. But something clicked immediately, they say, and within weeks they realized they shared the same instincts: a love of fashion, a drive to serve their community and a need to do something meaningful in the middle of demanding academic programs.

Now in their second year, Alex in Honours Health Sciences and Muayad in Honours Life Sciences, the pair runs StyleCycle, a student-led non-profit that has grown far beyond the conversation that sparked it. What started as a chat about clothes and community needs has turned into a multi-branch effort that blends sustainability research with hands-on support for Hamilton families.

Through volunteer shifts across the city, they kept noticing the same thing: families wearing clothing that was worn down, poorly fitting or wrong for the weather. They saw children without warm shoes and parents making do with damaged coats. Plenty of organizations collect clothing, but the pair felt something deeper was missing.

“What we do is fashion for good,” says Alex. “Our hope is to bring dignity and style to women and children living in shelters. We believe that how you look can transform how you feel, and everyone deserves that kind of confidence.”

So StyleCycle goes further than handing out clothes. They build outfits. They wash each piece, mend small flaws and pair items in a way that feels intentional. A sewn button or hemmed pant leg doesn’t just extend a garment’s life – it reflects their belief in circular fashion and dignity.

“What makes a difference is giving someone an outfit, not a random shirt,” Alex says. “If you donate an orange top on its own, what can someone do with it? But if you pair it with a brown skirt, suddenly it becomes something people reach for.”

Their curated racks at places like The Baby Depot let families browse, choose and leave with full outfits that feel assembled with care.

Their STEM backgrounds play into the work too. After taking a first-year elective that introduced concepts like embodied carbon and the circular economy, they realized their overflowing donation closet held something else: data. So they began weighing garments, estimating surface area and applying carbon-emissions methodologies to measure the environmental impact of keeping clothing in circulation.

“We thought, we have so much data, what if we start quantifying what we’re doing?” Muayad recalls.

Their first posters and abstracts are already finished, thanks in part to skills developed during summer research placements with the McMaster Institute for Research on Aging (MIRA) for Alex and NSERC for Muayad. Now they’re preparing papers exploring youth social psychology, sustainable fashion behaviour and emissions reductions through reuse.

“It’s been amazing because making posters, presenting them, writing an abstract – these are things that can be intimidating for a student at first. I remember our first conference, we didn’t even know where to print a research poster,” Muayad says. “But because we had the skills from our summer research placements, we could implement it for StyleCycle.”

While donating styled outfits through The Baby Depot, they noticed another gap. Supports focused heavily on newborns, not the mothers caring for them. The turning point came when they overheard moms joking about turning baby clothes into makeshift diapers because hygiene supplies were so expensive. The joke masked a serious need.

“We were helping with clothing – but what about the essentials you can’t reuse, like diapers or shampoo?” they wondered.

So they committed to assembling more than 50 hygiene kits for mothers and newborns before the holidays. Without funding, they turned to creative fundraising. Between midterms and research deadlines, they taught themselves to crochet and made festive keychains to sell at local markets. They added baked goods and McMaster-themed stickers, raising $300 across three events, including McMaster’s Holiday Market and Entrepreneur Week.

“I remember there were days during midterms where I’d knock on Maryam’s door and say, ‘Maryam, do you have time? Let’s crochet!’ And we would just sit there and make them, one after another. But we would have a whole pile at the end,” says Alex.

The fundraiser covered everything they needed for the kits, each containing three items tailored either to mothers, like breast wipes, or babies, like diaper rash cream. Parents visiting The Baby Depot during the holidays received one to take home. The impact didn’t end there: The Baby Depot has since launched a hygiene drive of its own and is exploring a new programming branch inspired directly by StyleCycle.

With StyleCycle expanding, Alex and Muayad hope to reach more Hamilton families and partner with more community groups. Their closet is full, so they’re not looking for clothing donations. Instead, they want connections to clients and organizations who could benefit from outfit styling, youth fashion workshops or future hygiene-focused initiatives.

For both students, the project has become the thing that keeps them grounded.

“We feel that StyleCycle is our outlet. Truly, this is our passion project. We’re not doing this one time and then walking away,” says Muayad. “We have big plans to keep going.”