Gucci is a world-famous fashion luxury brand. On February 13 this year, Marco Bizzarri, President and CEO of Gucci, will give a lecture at Parsons Design Institute! This is not the first time Marco Bizzarri has given a speech in Parsons, nor is it the first time that fashion celebrities have held similar activities in Parsons. Today, Natural Light will introduce you to the Parsons School of Design in the United States. In addition to fashion resources, what are the absolute advantages?
Image from YouTube, Marco Bizzarri in Parsons
As the president and CEO of Gucci, Marco Bizzarri has a pivotal position in the luxury fashion industry. Under the leadership of Marco Bizzarri, Gucci has made amazing changes in the past four years. The new Gucci has taken a bold path, but fashion has not lost its sense of retro style. The sudden change of transformation has also helped Gucci, which once had low sales, sweep away the decline.
The same thing as this breakthrough attempt and innovation is that Parsons also has personality and unique talent, which makes Parsons become the Dream school in the eyes of countless students. Similar to this impressive master sharing, these resources full of competitive advantages and exclusive attributes are also one of the reasons Parsons aspires to, but not just this, Parsons has a lot of charm, which makes it the best choice for fashion majors. As a desirable art school, what are the amazing advantages of Parsons?
What are the advantages of Parsons studying abroad?
Parsons Benefit | Stars and fashion circle resources
It is estimated that Parsons is the only person who can hold charity meetings in the name of colleges and universities and award awards to stars. For example, Marco Bizzarri's speech on February 13 is not his first visit to Parsons. As early as during the Parsons Benefit Gala in 2018, he brought a speech to Parsons.
Screenshot from YouTube, Parsons channel video
Parsons Benefit Gala is a permanent charity association of Parsons, which has been held for 70 years now and will be held at the end of May every year. The purpose of this charity association is not only to raise money for charity, but also to encourage students to have the courage to be creative and innovative like the winners every year. On May 20 this year, the 71st Parsons Benefit Gala will be held.
During the Parsons Benefit Gala in 2017, Rihanna, Carolina Herrera, Ken Downing and many other stars participated. In 2017, the charity award was awarded to Rihanna.
For these stars and designers, this award may be an "ordinary" moment in their lives, but for any student learning art or design, they are an absolute guide. Because Parsons Benfit Gala was founded to encourage those who provide support and unlimited help to future designers and drive design development with personal influence.
The picture is from Vogue official website, Rihanna in Parsons Benefit Gala
If the resources of celebrities such as Marco Bizzarri and the opportunities for lectures, cooperation and internships are "advantages" in other colleges, they can be said to be common in Parsons.
Let's just look at Parsons' YouTube channel videos, and the number is up to nearly 500. In addition to the open classes, lectures and student interviews of the school teachers, there are a series of master lectures.
Screenshot from YouTube, Parsons channel home page
These celebrities are leaders in all walks of life. Their methods of dealing with design and expression of design are the best reference for students. Their successful experience is a valuable sharing for every child who is learning.
It is very important for fashion industry, which is full of vitality and changes, to have the opportunity to have close access to the world's top industry practitioners and obtain the latest industry information.
NYFW/New York Fashion Week | Geographical advantages
In the fast changing fashion industry, being on the front line of the industry development, you can receive the latest industry information at any time, which is even more important for those who want to learn to engage in the fashion industry.
Parsons is located in the center of economy, culture and art - the Fifth Avenue of New York. With its advantageous geographical location, Parsons students can often see various fashion weeks, and even meet various fashion masters. The Parsons Benefit Gala I mentioned earlier is one of the best examples.
Secondly, New York has the most outstanding artists and designers in the world, as well as the richest art and design resources in the United States. The most representative in the field of fashion is that it is also the host of New York Fashion Week, the world's four major fashion weeks.
As students of Parsons, it is impossible to miss such advantageous fashion week resources. During their study, students will have the opportunity to attend the New York Fashion Week show. For example, MFA Fashion Design and Society Spring 2019 Ready to Wear is organized by New York Fashion Week.
In fact, Parsons' annual graduation exhibition has also attracted the attention of the fashion industry, which will not only attract VOGUE, WWD, L 'Officiel and other reports, but also many senior celebrities in the fashion industry will be invited to participate. As any excellent Parsons student knows, every show in the school is an opportunity, because you are likely to be signed on the spot.
In addition to Parsons' own academic aura, various local clothing exhibitions and art exhibitions in New York are also non-stop throughout the year. For tourists, these may just be a taste aid when visiting, but in Parsons' students' view, these are unique and available resources; In the opinion of Parsons students, any shopping mall on the streets of New York has become a learning opportunity. In addition, there are also some of the most noteworthy art galleries and museums in the United States. For example, The Met, Whitney Museum, MoMA and Lincoln Art Center have all become libraries and reference libraries for Parsons students.
Famous alumni | Alumni resources
Marc Jacobs, Anna Sui, Prabal Gurung, Tom Ford, Krakoff, former director of Coach, photographer Steve Meisel, Jason Wu, Alexander Wang, Yoji Yamamoto. Parsons graduates cover almost every aspect of the global fashion field.
The campus itself is rich in resources, including various studios, libraries, workshops, as well as many excellent works exhibitions and occasional student works shows. As a whole, the school is like a small museum with a strong artistic atmosphere.
At ordinary times, there will be many top figures in the industry to do the Lecture. If you often check the official website of the university, you will see a lot of information about the public lectures of the university. For example:
Screenshot from Parsons official website
Most Parsons teachers are semi full-time. That is to say, in addition to working in Parsons, your mentor may be a designer of a famous brand, an art studio manager, or even a boss with a personal brand. Such a tutor background will bring many useful practice opportunities to students. For example, Parsons directly provides students with opportunities such as CHANEL, Disney, Swarovski, etc.
For students from other schools, what they can have may be the opportunity to go to the exhibition and watch the Show; But at Parsons, you can not only watch the show, but also have the opportunity to be a direct participant in these projects and activities.
At ordinary times, the school will provide students with internship or practice opportunities from time to time. Although the main target is junior and senior students, even if you are a freshman now, you can also go and try. This advantage is an advantage for students to have access to career resources in advance.
Practice based teaching | Curriculum model
Although Parsons attaches great importance to the free development and creativity of students as a whole, it is absolutely speechless and strict in the details of the course. The number of students in each class will not exceed 20 under the guidance of studio.
This class gives teachers enough space, time and energy to pay attention to each student. Although the students' usual homework is free creation, the teacher's guidance is also very targeted one-on-one.
Secondly, many students' misunderstandings about Parsons are concentrated in that Parsons pays attention to students' ideas, and will ignore students' foundation. In fact, this is not the case. If you take a closer look at the curriculum offered on Parsons' official website, you will find that almost all freshmen's courses are the same studio courses.
No matter what major you choose to apply for, the real professional study starts in the second year, and even in the second year, the school will still arrange certain basic courses for students. In fact, this is what I often say to you. The important foundation year learning does not mean that Parsons attaches importance to students' personal development and ignores students' foundation. It is just that Parsons gives students enough freedom during basic courses to find their favorite fields and styles while learning the foundation.
Students have a solid foundation and initially form their own style and critical aesthetic awareness in the early stage, so that they can better start their later targeted professional learning. Here we will mention the teachers of the school. As we said earlier, the teachers of Parsons basically have their own "sidelines". Such professional experience is worth learning for students.
What they have is not only the accumulation of knowledge at the academic level, but also the senior experience in the field of fashion. For example, let's take MPS Fashion Management and Associate Professor of Fashion, Director Keanan Duffy as an example to see his personal history:
Screenshot from Parsons official website
Any tutor's qualifications are so powerful that it is undoubtedly a resource with competitive advantages in the industry for students. From the perspective of teachers, years of experience will tell them how to proceed from the actual situation and combine the professional content that students need to master to complete more intuitive and practical learning.
Secondly, in Parsons, the student union has a lot of dialogue with teachers. It is very different from domestic students, who may be more accustomed to "listening to the teacher". I make xxx and show it to the teacher. The teacher will give me direct feedback on the results and tell me to complete the project in the way of xxx.
But in Parsons, this situation will never happen. Last year, a student in charge of me often talked with me and the art tutor of Natural Light half a year before he entered Parsons. When it comes to learning problems, he once reported that many friends in China who used to think that sometimes Parsons' teachers trust students a little too much, Every time the topic is opened or the inspiration stage is good, the teacher is playing the role of a listener. Although he also adapted to a transitional period, he got used to it in 2 or 3 weeks and began to study in this way.
In fact, this is also the reason why Natural Light attaches great importance to the creative thinking and personal interests of students' own work collections, and uses guidance as the teaching philosophy. Only when you really have your own ideas about a thing or a project, can you better use your own style to present the works with the most views and ideas.
However, in the project with such interests and personal subjective ideas as the core, if the idea of others is imposed on it, it is actually not conducive to the logical and creative expression of students' thinking. Because even if the teacher provides the "best plan", it is also the "best plan" based on the teacher's personal concept. For you, it may not show your true ideas.
The picture is from Parsons official website. Students are thinking about the project
The teacher gives students enough space and time to talk about what they want to express, and then gives suggestions and guidance. Sometimes, even if the students are confused, the teachers will fully respect the students.
Even so, it does not mean that you can fish in Parsons. The teacher respects the free creative space of each student. But if you are "lazy" or "plagiarized", the teacher will "scold" you without mercy.
It is well known that American fashion design attaches great importance to practicality and commerciality. Therefore, most college courses require more practical clothing, which may lead to overemphasizing the practicality of clothing and ignoring students' creative expression. But in Parsons, students need to combine practicality and creativity to express comprehensively.
For example, there is a very important link in student curriculum creation, which is presentation. Different from the presentation of other schools, other schools are mostly tutors and students as the main participants. In Parsons, there is also a special participant in the presentation, that is, the industry leaders act as "spectators". They will give more real and feasible suggestions and guidance to students based on their own experience and views and from the whole industry environment.
It is actually very challenging to take both practicality and creativity into consideration. For example, in natural light, the teacher will guide students to carry out some experimental concept expression in ordinary classes. For example, during the summer class in 2018, the students of natural light did a series of projects with both strong experimental nature and absolute practical significance, For example, "dreams, dreams and experiences deduced based on user data", "charm of dialects, expression of visual symbols", "destruction, reorganization, regeneration, new clothing design experience" and other projects.
Natural light 2019 interdisciplinary summer class photos
In almost every project, natural light has arranged the link of material test to help students explore the usability and possibility of more materials and try to create with different materials.
Internship and Employment | Other Opportunities
Most foreign colleges and universities have Career Services, that is, student employment development service centers. Generally, the main clients of Career Services are students in their junior and senior years who are about to graduate and find jobs. It is necessary for some experienced instructors or professional practitioners to give some guidance.
In Parsons, in fact, since you were a freshman, the Career Services of the school will continuously provide students with more free employment opportunities. For example, some companies recruit students for all grades of the school. Even if you are still a freshman, you can try to participate.
In addition, experienced tutors have obvious advantages for students. Compared with other colleges, Parsons' biggest advantage in employment is that students will participate in many brand cooperation courses during their study. Some of these courses are sponsored by brands, some are led by brand designers, and some are workshops in the form of "co branding" cooperation.
For example, one of my former students is Fashion Design of Parsons School of Design Professional, because of a very accidental opportunity, he attended the New York Fashion Week in his sophomore year. Although different from the seniors and sisters, he participated in the Fashion Week as an assistant of fashion designer, this unique internship experience also made him know many industry insiders, and successfully entered Hollywood after graduation, and also participated in the dress design of Anne Hathaway.
For another example, the Parsons × Kering Empowering Imaging Design Competition, which has been held for 8 years now (2019), is a competition jointly sponsored by Parsons and Kering.
When it comes to Kering/Kaiyun Group, many people may feel very strange, but the brands of its several luxury subsidiaries are absolutely familiar, Gucci, Puma, Alexander McQueen, Bottega Veneta and Saint Laurent are all sub brands belonging to Kering.
Parsons × Kering Empowering Imaging every year is also attracting attention. Vogue, for example, tracks and reports the event progress every year.
Screenshot from Vogue official website
Regardless of the above, it is a direct employment opportunity for students. As long as your work is excellent and your ideas and expressions are unique, you may get an excellent job opportunity.
Such opportunities and opportunities occur almost every day in Parsons, and may actually happen to every student. First, well-known alumni and school instructors are the first resources of the school; Secondly, the cooperation between the school and major fashion brands is also an excellent opportunity for students to grasp. In Parsons, as long as you work hard enough and dare to try, you will have a chance.
Natural light shares more topics for you:
Will studying abroad have a good future? Is it better to choose overseas employment or return to work?
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