Parsons Paris '17
As a first-year student in the BFA Fashion Design program at Parsons Paris, Zorrilla felt his skills were improving but that he was “designing for no one.” His thinking changed in a foundation course taught by BBA Strategic Design and Management professor Kakee Scott.
“I thought it would be a lot of sticky notes and whiteboards,” he jokes.
Instead, Scott had the class read a report about dwindling U.S. auto
sales among millennials and projections that in the coming decades, cars
might become obsolete. She grouped the students and tasked them with
designing a service that would help present-day drivers transition to a
carless future 20 years from now. “It stuck with me that I could design
for a specific future that I wanted to see become a reality.”
Today
Zorrilla continues to design for the future. He oversees product
development for Telfar, a brand celebrated for its rejection of gender
binaries and luxury status symbols. One of his biggest projects was the
revamping of the brand’s iconic shopping bag, nicknamed “the Bushwick
Birkin.”
“We overhauled the interior and made it a lot more
functional,” says Zorrilla. The idea was to reference luxury “it” bags
while offering them at a more affordable price. “The bag has become a
status symbol and a sign of belonging to a certain crowd, except we’ve
broadened that membership by making the bag accessible, not by making it
exclusive. It has that cult status of a luxury bag––but it’s under
$300.”
When he isn’t designing for Telfar, Zorrilla spends time
researching for his own project, EVERYMAN, which began as his senior
thesis at Parsons Paris. The project is focused on men’s clothing and
investigates the relationship of menswear to the construction and
performance of masculinity in contemporary Western society.
The
collection proposes a gradual transformation of classic menswear
archetypes such as khaki pants and button-down shirts. By introducing
change incrementally, EVERYMAN honors the heritage of classic menswear
while exploring different trajectories for the future of men’s clothing.