SoHo store debut features graduating class from Parsons.

By Julia Chesky on June 19, 2009

NEW YORK (Herald de Paris) - Tuesday night I dropped in on the SoHo store Debut, which featured the strongest collections from the current graduating class from the Parsons School of Design.

I spoke with three designers that immediately caught my eye, including the winner of the coveted Designer of the Year award.

Jonathan Cohens collection was inspired by the 1990 documentary, Paris is Burning, which was filmed in the mid to late 1980s. The film is about drag queens, drag ballrooms, and the underground. Men who lived the life in the clubs but in reality were prostitutes and weren’t living such a glamorous life after all. The main print throughout the collection came from the vanity mirror in the movie. Cohen blurred pearls, lipstick, and lights throughout the print to create a decadent pattern. Showcasing his theme of making the best of life, celebrating your body and image no matter you have, in a seasonless collection.

Desiree Neman took a more free flowing inspiration for her relaxed collection. Neman told me that there was no specific inspiration, she aspired to recreate the feelings she had based on songs like Nancy Sinatra’s Bang Bang and Led Zeppelins Dazed and Confused. The collection is a modern take on a very organic effortless easy to wear concept; incorporating rich fabrics with flattering draping. It’s about being who you are in your clothes, creating a slightly vulnerable but strong woman.

Robert Fitzsimmons, 2009’s Parsons Designer of the Year, created a contrasting collection based on the concept of a woman no longer needing a man. If man became extinct, how would a woman dress and what her self sufficiency would look like. He raised the question how much does a modern woman need to have a man to protect her? How her gender role would chance and polarize if men were gone. The collection incorporates masculine machine aesthetic with feminine touches in it’s pink/purple palette, with a sharp contrast towards the masculine side with the grays. Fitzsimmons also incorporated laser cutting into some of his pieces [such as the purple dress he is pictured next to] as well as adding slight padding details to pieces that flattered the figure, allowing women to wear the padding trend and not having the padding trend wear them.