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A crowd surge at the Astroworld Festival in Houston left 10 people dead in November 2021. Sydnee Johnson, who attended the concert that fateful day, knows that making it out alive was more than a minor miracle.

“Everyone who died that day was an arm’s reach away from me,” she said.

Johnson, a 2024 graduate of Auburn University’s College of Human Sciences, is now living in New York City, where she works for a high-end bespoke tailor. But as a student at Auburn, she struggled with the trauma she experienced at that concert. While working through her emotions with a therapist in Auburn’s Student Counseling and Psychiatric Services (SCPS), she was inspired to design a piece of clothing that helped her communicate the overwhelming anxiety she was feeling.

That design is now part of Showcase 2025, a campus-wide celebration of faculty and student creative scholarship and work. Titled “Phoenix,” Johnson’s piece will be on display in the Gogue Performing Arts Center lobby Feb. 24-28.

The day of the concert

Johnson attended the two-day Astroworld Festival with her cousin and two friends. On the first night, 50,000 attendees were awaiting the mainstage performance of rapper Travis Scott.

Johnson recalls feeling anxious and uncomfortable the entire day. She described being bothered by a low-pitch frequency playing through the speakers constantly, not having enough access to water and crowds so aggressive they used wire cutters to get through the gates.

“Everything was really chaotic from the beginning,” she said. “I could feel in my gut something was not right, but I thought maybe this is just how it is at a music festival, or maybe I was just nervous because I was so excited to be there.”

As the day wore on, a clock on the massive main stage began to count down to Scott’s appearance. With five minutes left to go, the crowd started to press forward.

Johnson, who has asthma, quickly realized not only was she not getting enough oxygen, but there was nothing she could do about it. She looked up at the stage and saw a digital image of a phoenix spreading its wings alongside plumes of flame. That was one of the last things she would remember clearly about the concert.

“I remember feeling the heat, and then a phoenix came up on the mountain and spread its wings across the stage,” she said. “My brain was starting to get foggy, and I remember thinking, ‘I feel like I’m in hell.’”

Getting out

As she stood there struggling to breathe, the crowd pressed closer until it was lifting Johnson and her friends off their feet. People around her were falling down, getting trampled and even having seizures. She saw a child, the youngest person who died that day, fall from his father’s shoulders, while the person next to her went into cardiac arrest.

“The hardest thing I’ve had to work through was seeing that little boy falling,” Johnson said. “In my brain, I asked why was it him and not me? In that moment, I wanted to help that little boy, but there was nothing I could do.”

People in the crowd were screaming for Scott to stop performing, but the show went on. Johnson wasn’t getting enough oxygen and was blacking out; what felt like 10 minutes of being trapped in the surge was actually closer to 45. She kept hoping the pressure of the crowd would ease, but it never did.

A young woman wears a black corset and black and red skirt

Johnson constructed a corset made from polyester satin, canvas and brocade that cinches in the back with a long red ribbon that runs down the back. She also created a skirt made from red and black ombre organza lined with black polyester satin.

As she struggled to stay upright, one of her friends put his arms around her to give her a little space amid the crush. Suddenly and without warning, he and a half dozen strangers lifted her up high. She crowd-surfed over the masses until she was past the barricades and set down in the VIP section near the stage, where a weeping security guard helped her to escape the venue.

“It felt so supernatural to me that it couldn’t have happened any other way,” Johnson said. “Even people right up next to the barricade couldn’t get out, and somehow, I did. I will never understand how that happened.”

Johnson’s friends were eventually able to crawl under the barriers to escape, and they reunited outside several hours later as ambulances and police on horseback streamed into the venue. They walked the five miles back to their vacation rental in Houston. When they awoke to the news the next morning, they saw the death toll and recognized many of the dead had been standing near them.

The aftermath

When she returned to Auburn to continue her studies in the Apparel Merchandising, Design and Production Management program, Johnson found she was struggling with anxiety and claustrophobia. Situations she’d never had issues with before, like presenting projects in class and sitting in traffic, were sending her body into fight-or-flight mode. After eight months of therapy at SCPS, she finally began to feel like her old self.

“I had never been to a therapist before, but she was amazing, and I’m so grateful for her,” Johnson said.

For the first year-and-a-half after the incident, hearing a Travis Scott song would make her heart pound — especially the songs she heard while stuck in the crowd surge.

“I have worked through it, and I can listen to his music if it’s on, but I don’t choose to listen to it,” Johnson said.

Inspiration strikes

About 11 months after the concert, Johnson realized she was nearing the one-year anniversary of the event, and she began to struggle with depression.

“I remember thinking, ‘No, I’m not going to sit and dwell in the sadness and let this overtake me,’” she said. “I wanted to do something with it.”

And what she did was create the first pieces of clothing she had ever sewn. Johnson decided to express the emotions she was feeling by making something tangible. She was still early enough in the apparel program that she hadn’t yet learned to sew, so she enlisted the help of faculty members Karla Teel and Dawn Michaelson, as well as several friends who were further ahead in their studies.

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Spotlighting creative scholarship on campus

Showcase 2025, a campus-wide celebration of creative scholarship and work, will kick off with an exhibit of faculty work on Jan. 2 at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art.

“I adore Dr. Teel,” Johnson said. “She is one of my mentors, and we got very close during that time because she helped talk me through things. I was getting very emotional making it, and she’s very empathetic. Without her and Dr. Michaelson, I could not have finished.”

Johnson constructed a corset made from polyester satin, canvas and brocade that cinches in the back with a long red ribbon that runs down the back. She also created a skirt made from red and black ombre organza lined with black polyester satin.

“I chose the corset because it was restrictive,” she said. “I knew I wanted to do black and red to symbolize the phoenix and the fire and the colors I remembered seeing.”

While she wasn’t designing for a grade, Johnson decided she wanted her pieces to be good enough to submit to The Fashion Event, the program’s annual fashion showcase. She ended up winning Best in Show there that year.  

On Teal’s recommendation, Johnson submitted her “Phoenix” to Showcase in early 2024 before graduating and moving to New York City. She was surprised when she was recently notified that her piece had been accepted to Showcase, which was judged and carefully curated by faculty on campus. Her younger brother, Samuel, a first-year Auburn student studying mechanical engineering, will deliver her piece to be displayed at GPAC and represent her at the show.

With the help of a therapist, faculty, friends and her love of design, Johnson is proud she has worked through her trauma to create something beautiful.

“It wasn’t even really winning the Best in Show award or being chosen for Showcase that made me happy,” she said. “It was just the pride and accomplishment I felt in myself that I could use that emotion to create something beautiful.”