New York’s Parsons School of Design is — like London’s Central St. Martin’s — one of the top fashion school on the planet. It’s churned out a stellar crowd of industry alums — including one of its most appreciative, Donna Karan.
Now Karan is giving back — sponsoring a new MFA program in Fashion Design and Society, which gets its official kick off tonight!
The program has been in development for the past year or so and is quite unique.
Launching next fall, Parsons’ MFA in Fashion Design and Society (FDS) will be the most ambitious program of its kind to pair both the practical and theoretical components of clothing design. Over the course of two years, FDS students will utilize the entire academic oeuvre of Parsons — and its parent institute, The New School — to further their mastery of fashion as it relates to business, technology, history, media and other artistic realms. Simultaneously, FDS students will pursue individual projects in dedicated studio spaces much as photographers, sculptors or painters develop their craft in more established MFA programs for traditional visual arts.
In essence, the Parsons program is the first of its kind to treat fashion as one would treat any other creative field in the MFA arena (such as visual arts, sculpture, video art, etc).
Students both work in class, but then will also devote ample time to their own “studio” projects at specially built studio spaces on west 40th street. It’s a bit like Project Runway mixed with hard-core academic studies — all under the sponsorship of Donna Karan and under the watchful eye of Shelly Fox, the Donna Karan Professor of Fashion at Parsons.
Sounds pretty cool.