Parsons School of Fashion

Parsons has educated generations of illustrious designers and today leads the global industry though innovative, rigorous programs and projects. Parsons’ School of Fashion engages the spectrum of fashion design and marketing practice, competitively situating graduates academically and professionally. You develop your voice within a thriving field while innovating ways to bring beautiful, responsible, and relevant work to light.

Your education interweaves project-based methodology with factors including social justice and environmental sustainability. In studios and seminars, you learn specialized techniques and innovative approaches to fashion-related work ranging from concept development and marketing to responsible manufacturing and global distribution. At Parsons Paris, our European branch, you engage with site-specific features of the industry, such as heritage brands and couture.

Led by a faculty of 100+ professionals, you develop a conceptual and practical foundation to your practice, whether you’re focused on design, marketing, PR, or merchandising fields. Faculty employ their experience and connections to create classes with industry partners including Louis Vuitton, Braccalini, Bulgari, Chanel, Christian Dior, and Li Ning, giving you industry experience and networking opportunities.


Events including Rethinking Fashion and At The Parsons Table bring innovators like Ralph Lauren and Carol Lim and Humberto Leon (Opening Ceremony) to campus to explore topics such as globalization, sustainability, and branding. Faculty-invited guests — Diane von Furstenberg, Julie Gilhart, Cathy Horyn, alumni Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez (Proenza Schouler) and Narciso Rodriguez — serve as critics, share perspectives, and network.

New York represents fashion’s full range: mass-market and small-scale production; legendary workwear and innovative couture. Paris features heritage brands, artisanal technique, and celebrated fashion archives. The cities offer complementary learning and opportunity, whether your focus is fashion as design, business, or sociocultural force. Parsons connects you with professionals in all settings, including at New York and Paris Fashion Weeks.

Network with the industry through course collaborations, exhibitions, reviews, and other events. Internships with Parsons’ partners — including Donna Karan, Marc Jacobs, J.Crew, Vogue, and the New York Times — apply your learning and expose you to new industry sectors. Contact with incubators and start-ups broadens your opportunities. 

Mission

Parsons students are designers, artists, and scholars who learn to apply the transformative capacity of design responsibly, creatively, and purposefully. Our diverse community of students and faculty explores multiple sites and scales of engagement, from on-campus research initiatives to partnerships that bring about change in New York and in the world.

Vision

Parsons’ future will be shaped by the core values that have defined our past: curricular innovation, collaborative methods, pioneering uses of technology, and experimentation. As part of The New School, Parsons shares an institutional vision that aligns with shifts in the global economy, society, and environment, which animate our mission and our values:

Creativity: Innovation, and a desire to challenge the status quo, both in what and how we teach and in the intellectual ambitions of the School itself. Social engagement: Orienting students’ academic experience to help them become critically engaged citizens dedicated to solving problems and contributing to the public good.

Educational Approach 

We will fulfill our mission by extending The New School’s legacy as a nontraditional academic community, nimble and responsive to change, that: Focuses on and engages with critical contemporary issues. Prioritizes humanity and culture in designing systems and environments to improve the human condition, an approach that draws on design thinking and the liberal, creative, and performing arts. Places project-based learning at the center of the educational experience. Takes full advantage of our New York City location and connectivity to global urban centers

Fashion Courses Offered

Fashion Marketing (AAS)
Fashion Design (AAS)
Fashion Design (MFA)
Fashion Design (BFA)
Fashion Design and Society (MFA)
Textiles (MFA)

Student Life

Like New York itself, Parsons never sleeps. The school is animated by a vision of progressive creativity and social activism, and energized by its kinetic urban environment. Parsons is where ambition, ingenuity, and collaboration tirelessly converge. Parsons students have access to extensive studio facilities and professionally staffed model, fabrication, and print shops, including rapid prototyping, photography and imaging labs, metalworking, jewelry, and woodworking facilities.

In addition to individual program facilities, Parsons provides resources, including design libraries, computer labs, and galleries and exhibition facilities, that are available to all Parsons students. These are supplemented by shared New School facilities, including residence halls, cafeterias, and libraries, as well as an array of student services, ranging from health care to extracurricular and student development programs.

New York City

MoMA, the Public Theater, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, the New Museum, the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, Eyebeam, and the New York Historical Society—these are just a small sampling of the cultural offerings in New York City, a global nexus of art, design, and business.A Parsons education isn’t just a series of isolated classes—it’s a fully immersive learning experience in which the city itself serves as an urban design laboratory. Students study New York’s urban architecture and design, analyze the city’s dazzling array of retail environments, and participate in showings at cutting-edge venues like The Kitchen, and the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF), and Design Within Reach.

Students also participate in the city’s professional life, taking advantage of the many internship opportunities and participating in projects with community and industry partners. And Parsons itself is a noted venue for exhibitions, performances, and lectures by celebrated artists and thinkers. We encourage students to explore the ever-changing roster of events at Parsons and throughout New York.