Alumni Brand Spotlight: HISAURA
AAS Design alum Gabriella Wells is the founder and designer of fashion brand HISAURA, created to offer designs for all levels of ability. Her beautiful, flowing designs focus on the wearer. “We offer an inclusive approach to fashion design, providing a positive outlook on human abilities.” Gabriella has a global perspective to fashion having lived across the U.S. and in Latin America. The overarching goal and mission of her brand is to bring a new standard of functionality and excellence to the fashion landscape. The silhouettes she crafts are fluid with a modern aesthetic, elegance, ease for the wearer and…
Textile Artist and Lace Expert visits Fashion Textile Survey Course
Earlier this semester, textile artist and lace expert Elena Kanagy-Loux (@erenanaomi) visited Sara Idacavage’s (@historyalamode) “Fashion Textile Survey” classes to teach our AAS marketing and design students about the social impacts of lace throughout history. Over the centuries, lace has been connected to a number of aspects related to wealth, power, and politics, making it one of the most significant (and expensive!) textiles in the history of fashion. After providing an overview of the numerous ways that lace has impacted fashion design and sociopolitical divides, from sumptuary laws to the democratization of fashion made possible through the industrial revolution, Elena…
Katharine Zarrella from Fashion Unfiltered Speaks on Campus
On October 23rd, veteran fashion journalist Katharine Zarrella spoke with AAS Fashion Marketing program director Emily Huggard about Fashion intersections, influencers, the changes in fashion journalism, fashion culture and the future of fashion. Katherine described her site, Fashion Unfiltered, as serving a growing need by offering tightly curated, in-depth fashion journalism of a type that is growing consistently less available in glossy consumer fashion magazines. Her entertaining online resource is designed to be accessible and informative to all with a passion for fashion. Intelligent, playful and smart, it captures forward moving fashion trends, as well the idiosyncratic and eccentric.
Alumni Brand Spotlight: BABYGHOST
AAS Fashion Design alum Qiaoran Huang is the cofounder of the brand BABYGHOST (@babyghost_nyc), founded in 2010 to bring together the energy and diversity of New York. Both her and her partner Joshua Hupper worked with Diane Von Furstenberg and met while working for Nathan Jenden before joining to launch their first collection. The brand’s style is reminiscent of the Lower East Side and is true to the see-now-buy-now concept. Qiaoran explains their inspiration saying, “Things around us really affect us. So instead of just one inspiration, we looked at different things and just kept going.” Their Fall 2018 collection…
Inside look at our Couture Studio Class!
This semester, Sara Idacavage, Collections Manager of the Parsons Fashion Study Collection, is partnering with Parsons AAS Fashion Design director Francesca Sammaritano for the first-ever couture studio class that incorporates regular visits to our study collection, allowing students to complement their design practice with ongoing archival research. During midterm presentations, AAS design student Jummy Thomas explained how a 1950s Sophie Gimbel evening dress inspired the silhouette and construction of her own design (shown in muslin), which she is developing for this special section of “Fashion Techniques: Couture”. Jummy plans to combine the innovative draping elements of the classic Gimbel dress with her…