Following an apparent trend of clothing swaps and similar fashion-oriented events on campus in the last month, St. Edward’s fashion magazine, CABRA, hosted its first pop-up shop of the semester earlier this week.

In contrast to the other non-profit events organized by Students for Sustainability and unaffiliated individuals on campus in recent weeks, however, the young fashion publication has a different ambition for their fashion exchange: they need to make money.

For CABRA, the pop-up is less about sustaining the environment and more about sustaining their business model. It’s a way for the publication to make money and advertise in the process, a useful thing for the small campus magazine.

“[The pop-up] is an initiative that was started pretty much from our inception,”  CABRA’s Editor-in-Chief Ethan Cummins said. “It’s our primary source of funding.”

Cummins said that the idea was born out of necessity, since the publication receives little-to-no funding from the university.

“We were trying to find a way to make money for ourselves, to reach out to the community, engage people and get them excited in a way that’s somehow oriented towards fashion,” Cummins said. “The first one was kind of a trial run and it really was a huge hit, so we’ve been trying to improve it.”

One of the magazine’s contributors, Patricia Medina, said that the idea for a pop-up came up at a meeting last spring when the magazine was trying to find ways to support itself without help from the university.

She said that all the clothing they sold was donated by students and members of the magazine who wanted to give away old stuff.

“A lot of people on campus have a great sense of style so they obviously have good pieces,” Medina said.

Cummins mentioned that the magazine is likely to work with other organizations that have hosted their own version of the clothing swap in the future.

“We’re always trying to reach out to collaborate with other organizations and when it comes to concepts for our photo shoots or these events,” Cummins said. “[Other] events on campus are really visible and really successful, so if we can share in that partnership and do something that’s gonna be that much better for our little community here then I’m totally open to it.”

Cummins said that the revenue from the pop-up shop will probably go toward printing more copies of the magazine and making it more accessible to the community.

Medina said that CABRA will likely have several more pop-up shops throughout the semester and that they are anticipating the next one sometime in April.