DATE: 4th September 2019. PLACE: New York Fashion Week. TIME: 19.00
Delicate beadwork, plant-stuffed plastic jackets and dangling threads, Material clashes, dangling beads, stitching and splashes of nudity were prominent through a number of college students’ body of works. Above all, Parsons’ 2019 BFA runway served as a strong reminder that this next generation of design talent has much to bring to the industry’s table
Ji Min Lee
Ji Min Lee
Ji Min Lee, who sent deconstructed men’s suits down the runway, with jackets and pants that had random arms and legs missing, revealing the models’ fleshy body parts, with mesh fabrics that had dangly trim pieces in their place. It seemed like a commentary on the state of manhood and the rigidity of men’s traditional dressing, and perhaps their emotions, too. Interestingly, the collection was inspired by the “female gaze” according to the university.
Ji Min Lee
Ji Min Lee
Ji Min Lee
Meredith Bullen
Meredith Bullen
Meredith Bullen
Tara Babylon
Tara Babylon was inspired by for her MFA thesis collection. Safety pins reflected Sheffield, crochet reminded her of Baghdad, McDonald’s and neon colors represented Manchester, sex and fetish were reflections from London, and college varsity graphics represented NYC. She found inspiration by collages, silhouettes, and dancing, with fabric playing a pivotal role in the movement. She also likens her designs to “craft couture with hard glamour,” and the pieces are for bodies that “do not identify as gender-specific.”
Tara Babylon
Tara Babylon
Tara Babylon
Natalie Vladimiroff
Natalie Vladimiroff
Natalie Vladimiroff
Zill-e-Huma
Zill-e-Huma
Zill-e-Huma
Sho Konishi
Sho Konishi
His MFA thesis collection entitled “Garden of Eden” was a wearable archive of life and nature as material. Konishi explored sustainability through the idea of “Urban Nature.” The reality is almost everything we wear or use in some way previously had a life. Plastic usage these days seems nearly unavoidable, and to a lot of people is just a material to be used and thrown away. But plastic came from life as well and doesn’t just go away. Once made, it is here forever. By combining plastic and nature in his collection, it was a way of showing respect to these things, not just as a material. The designs that came down the runway made the models look like eco-apocalypse warriors. They dressed in plastic garments that contained seeds, plants, feathers, dried flowers, and other natural elements. References to recycling and the earth carried throughout the pieces. The collection made you think about the future of fashion and how the production of garments needs to change.
Sho Konishi
Sho Konishi
Sho Konishi
Hualei Lu
The focal points of misinterpretation in Yu’s collection are the puns and double-entendres that the English names for certain garments are loaded with. Album ‘jackets’, for example, are spliced and collaged to make wearable jackets; a pair of briefs is fashioned from the crumpled ‘brief’ that outlines Yu’s collection proposal. That’s not to say, however, that her primary interest lay in the actual objects themselves; rather, she chose the objects on account of the amusing mismatches of the various meanings of their names. “I thought it was really interesting when I saw how one word could relate to different things. But my approach is more of a way to translate that concept into the language of fashion
Hualei Lu
Hualei Lu
Hualei Lu
Hualei Lu
