Parsons The New School for Design Announces MFA Fashion Show

Parsons The New School for Design has released show information for it’s MFA Fashion Show. 

The runway presentation will take place at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, September 16th at MILK Studios. Eleven graduates from the MFA in Fashion Design and Society will show their thesis collections. Learn more about the designers below.

Diletta Cancellato

“This collection centers around the everyday body, or natural body, in the context of its ordinary intimacy, with a particular focus on the use of the shapewear undergarments. In this collection I aim to deeply understand and glorify part of that orgy of tolerance, total syncretism and the absolute and unstoppable polytheism of beauty that represent the aesthetic ideal of our contemporary society.”   –  Diletta Cancellato

Katherine Ann Mavridis

“Two words drove the development of my collection: RUPTURE – REDUCTION. RUPTURE: A moment of release; broken. A moment of change; shift. A cut, a slit. These ‘shifts’ or ‘rips’ symbolize a lived garment – the human touch – of life existing within the garment. REDUCTION: The elimination of information; breaking down of a complex form into a singular self. I work via the process of reduction. I examined clothing in its most reduced form, tubes. All clothes are – in the most simplified form – tubes connected to other tubes; a sleeve, a pant leg, the body of a sweater – and holes from which our extremities extend – a neck hole, a cuff, plus moments of connection. I examine clothing from abstract ‘tubes’, taking away a preconceived idea of where these tubes must exist and allowed them to become what they wanted to be.” – Katherine Ann Mavridis

Liya Liu

I designed my collection, to resemble the characteristics of trash bags of New York City. While bearing resemblance to common trash bags, “This is not trash, do not throw away” on the pieces challenge and blur traditional boundary between creation and trash.” – Liya Liu

Long Xu

“I used weaving technique to weave not only physical fabric but also different cultures together. My goal is weaving things together, deconstructing and reconstructing them to make a new thing physically and mentally.” –  Long Xu

Mayako Penelope Kano

“Partially inspired by hand-colored photographs from the Meiji period, Reverse Fade embraces the idea of being caught in limbo between old and new worlds which unite but are somehow subverted to create a surreal element.Triggered by the faded, falling, lively, and burnt nature of fabrics from past eras, I sought to bring these qualities into a contemporary dialogue through preservation and translucent layering.” – Mayako Penelope Kano

Pengji Cai

“My thesis collection is about garment crash! The start point for thesis collection is finding a different way to making pattern and draping. At the beginning I was focusing on making garment installation, trying to destroy imagine of the garment itself. I then found the similarity between my installation and John Chamberlain’s sculpture using crashed cars, so I thought why not make a garment crash!”            – Pengji Cai

Ryohei Kawanishi

“My collection expresses the irrationality of the fast paced fashion system. His voice aligns with the concept of Dada, which was born as anti-art movement descending from the industrial revolution. The collection incorporates found objects and mixed media, which look beyond traditional aesthetic standards. From the perspective of nonsense humor and playfulness, through unnecessarily labor-intensive techniques, copying, faking and (just) wearing, this collection explores the relationship between meaning, materialistic capitalism, aesthetic and accepted norms.” –  Ryohei Kawanishi

Shih Hsun Lee

“This collection is inspired by the social norms and the culture of the bespoke tailoring, implemented the highly detailed appliqué technique on the fabrication and the garment finishing. Each prints and stripes are in fact consists of layers of carefully positioned panels. Those intensively accurate stitch lines created a subtle thickness that transformed the structure of the traditional tailoring suits, also gave depth to the originally flat fabric surface.” –  Shih Hsun Lee

Sisi Liu

“In this collection, I focus on handcraft techniques, which I learned from the “DIY” packages, such as ribbon embroidery, yarn embroidery, felting, making 3D fake flower with fabric, making dry flowers, etc. I researched all these skills, then I enlarged these DIY outcomes, in order to show these traditional skills in an innovative way.” –  Sisi Liu

Tianfang Jing

“My collection uses a new technique to push the idea of how to extend the definition of fabric and to push the boundaries between garments and the environment of itself.” – Tianfang Jing

Varpu Verna Hel Rapeli

“My collection – a knitwear collection for women- is an exploration of layering of color through the eyes of an abstract artist. Taking inspiration from Mark Rothko’s paintings I utilized different mediums to study layering within knitwear. My working process included multiple phases with different approaches on layering. While developing knitwear swatches I simultaneously did models from cardboard, and draw abstract shapes which I then enlarged to big toiles, which then started inspired the silhouette of the garments.” – Varpu Verna Hel Rapeli

-Simran Pabla