CHIEDZA KASEKE

"This BFA Fashion Class at Parsons didn’t have it easy, dealing with both COVID lockdowns and a strike by adjunct faculty. It forced them to combine their creative pursuits with real-life problem solving. Their roads may have been rocky, but these students are heading into the industry without an ivory-tower perspective. Understanding that fashion is a difficult business to break into can only be a plus.

​

With 244 enrollees, it’s difficult to make generalizations about the class, but what stands out overall is the hands-on physicality of much of the work, be that expressed through comforting pillow-like textures, soft armor, exoskeletons, or sculptural elements. Siloed by the pandemic, what these grads missed out on in terms of collegiality, they seem to have replaced with materiality, connecting with and manipulating their materials intensely. In most cases students seemed to be searching not for perfection or store-floor readiness, but for textural, distressed clothes and deconstructions that mirror an overall sense of uncertainty . . ."