Parsons MFA
Annaliese Griffith-Jones, 26
“I chose nostalgia as a concept because I feel like it can be connected to almost everything,” explained Griffith-Jones. “I looked into nostalgia theory, about how we can have this armchair sense that we have never actually experienced—like an event or an time period, but we can still feel interconnected with it. That idea of a falsified reality is what I’m creating,” she added, “because I think nostalgia has this binary mode of acting like memory, however it’s actually this unattainable reality that we’ve never lived.”
Floyd Hogan, 26
“For this collection, I was looking at the kind of fabulously strange but intensely serious world of extreme masculinity, and how society conditions and constructs ‘the norm,’ but then pushes what’s extreme to the fringes,” she said. “So, I tapped into the worlds of WWE Wrestling and extreme bodybuilding, but enhanced the campy, theartric vibe.”
Jimin Kim, 26
“I wanted to embrace my nationality as a Korean, Asian woman,” Kim said about her inspiration for the collection. “When I researched female Asian culture, I found that there is so much misogyny. So, I incorporated a traditional Korean knotting technique that’s used to make decorative ornaments, but has a hidden meaning [that translates] to ‘play with girl,’ because it’s small and beautiful. Then I thought to myself, ‘Why don’t I make them bigger, and re-appropriate this technique to make it stronger?’”
Venice W., 27
“My collection is about saving time, being on time, and respecting time,” explained the designer. “I’m always late, I always sleep too much. So, I experimented with the idea of how to be a ‘lazy designer’—how to design something without designing anything at all.”
Wrong Xiao, 25
“I wanted to explore gender beyond its boundary, to usher in more fluid expressions of identity that are long overdue,” Xiao said. “I always want to try to change society’s perceptions of what’s normal and appropriate. So, I came up with the idea that gender is something that can be changed—just like the temperature.”
Irina Wang, 26
“My collection is about my eight unfulfilled lives,” explained the designer. “I have eight different characters—a mail carrier, a schoolgirl, an architect, an actress, a pianist, a bridal ballerina, a lawyer and myself.”
She added: “Fashion is the only language besides Mandarin and English that I can speak.”
Limeng Ye, 24
“I was always very interested in the idea of a daily look,” said Ye. “I feel like a lot of accidents happen each day, so I wanted to record them.”
Amy Crookes, 24
“My collection was about trying to capture a sense of immediacy,” said the designer. “I find that where commerciality and art meet is the most exciting thing about fashion.”
Photos by Monica Feudi; courtesy of Parsons.
