When Timo Rissanen’s Specialized Studio 2 class shifted to online learning, he knew it would be a challenge. Not only were his students dispersed across the globe, but their access to resources was suddenly limited. What Rissanen, associate professor of fashion design and sustainability, didn’t know was that despite the change in learning platforms, the lessons his class would take away from the semester would provide them with a new vision and passion for their craft.
“Some students felt that what they had worked on in the first half of the semester was no longer relevant enough for them to continue working on it given the circumstances in the world,” Rissanen explained, before mentioning his student Niharika Adwani, BFA Fashion Design, who returned home to India. “Her parents work in a garment factory, and she asked if she could pivot from the collection she’s designing to designing PPE that her parent’s factory could manufacture. So we focused on designing protective clothing that was as inexpensive as possible so that it was as accessible to as many people as possible.”
It’s such shifts in thinking and creating that Rissanen is interested in teaching, and, as the world faces uncharted times, he believes it’s these shifts that will be necessary as his students reimagine the future of fashion.
“Students were coming back to class and saying, ‘What is the point of fashion?’ ‘What is the point of me becoming a fashion designer?’” Rissanen said. “And yet, when intentionally designed to be so, fashion can be an incredibly positive force in the world. One of the things I love about Parsons is we literally have the whole world here; you have a lot of different perspectives from around the world in one classroom and that makes learning incredibly rich.”
One way Rissanen challenged his class to think outside the box during remote learning was to have them use only the materials they had on hand, regardless of where they were — whether in a hotel in Shanghai or their parents’ home in Wisconsin.
“We agreed as a class to not order materials online,” he explained. “We collectively agreed we’d try to work with what we had, and there was something really lovely about refraining from buying stuff online. There was something really valuable for the students to learn in that way as well in being resourceful.”
Rissanen said that although he wasn’t physically in the classroom with his students, he finished the spring semester feeling more connected with his class than ever before as they learned in a new way and overcame new challenges.
“Even though we hadn’t seen each other in person for two months, the sense of community on Zoom was just palpable,” Rissanen said about his final class of the year. “It was so alive in front of me that I started crying.”