School of Fashion

Justice-Focused Practice

Students’ learning is guided by a commitment to social justice, decolonization, and environmental sustainability. You learn to disrupt hierarchies, colonial systems, and outmoded beauty ideals and body standards, while discovering and reclaiming ethically robust forms of learning and creative expression that foster more just relationships among people and with the world.

Inclusive Approaches

Our work addresses all dimensions of the fashion system. Students develop innovative strategies and design solutions that center the needs and desires of all identities, including plus-size people, people with disabilities, and queer, trans, and non-binary individuals and those of all gender expressions. This approach encourages students to examine social, theoretical, and contextual applications of fashion design, textiles, and management and communication and to challenge fashion’s dominant perceptions and practices, viewing them through their own unique lens.

Research, Theory, and Practice

Our programs are grounded in research-led processes and a critical understanding of the emotional, sociocultural, and environmental dimensions of fashion as well as the global fashion industry’s impact on the environment, society, and business. Students are challenged to engage in transdisciplinary collaboration with other fields of study and students across the school and the university.

Learning from Industry Leaders

The School of Fashion organizes curricular partnerships with fashion companies including Kering, Tory Burch, Ganni, Mara Hoffman, Louis Vuitton, Swarovski, UNIQLO, and Woolmark and organizations such as Special Olympics, the United Nations, Goodwill, and the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Our network of alumni and industry innovators, such as Olivier Rousteing, Casey Cadwallader, Tory Burch, Ralph Lauren, Yohji Yamamoto, and Diane von Furstenberg, are actively involved in the programs.

Craft and Technology

Students are encouraged to explore the intersection of craft methodologies and digital technology to develop a range of future-facing fashion products, services, and systems. Courses are designed to help students develop new possibilities for fashion design, textile design, and business that employ technology to support more regenerative practices. Design students explore emerging areas of digital fashion design, ancestral textile practices, and new fabrication techniques while business students study the impact of data on industry practice, including product development, local and global production, and supply chain strategies.

NYC: Access to a Global Fashion Center

The dynamic culture of New York City enriches your learning through the diverse perspectives and creative networks it offers you access to. Internships with brands including LVMH, The Row, Issey Miyake, Vogue, Maison Margiela, and Marc Jacobs enable you to apply your learning and expose you to new industry sectors. After graduation, alumni go on to positions at Bode, Burberry, The Row, Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs, Nike, Theory, Thom Browne, Proenza Schouler, UNIQLO, and many other important firms.

Community

To create a safe and collaborative school culture, we celebrate the diverse identities, perspectives, experiences, and worldviews of our students, faculty, staff, and alumni.

Decolonization

We challenge and reimagine hierarchies and colonial practices and standards and commit ourselves to ethical modes of learning and expression that foster just relationships with one another and with the planet.

Belonging

We are at our best when we all can show up as ourselves, learning with empathy, respect, and humility; challenging our biases; and expanding our own awareness while reshaping the prevailing narratives of the fashion industry.

Equity

We intentionally broaden access and provide necessary support to groups historically and currently marginalized by fashion education and the industry in order to redistribute power and foster justice. One way we foster access is through the Parsons Disabled Fashion Student Program, a recruitment, scholarship, and mentorship initiative for Disabled Fashion Design students.

Accountability

We value transparency and strive to learn from our mistakes. We are responsible for our actions, our words, and our impact in the classroom, the community, and the world.