Arts Thread

Upon reaching my senior year of high school, my fashion class was challenged to utilize used men’s dress shirts abandoned at the local dry cleaners as the basis of our materiality for our school’s Upcycled Fashion Show. This direct confrontation with the wastefulness of the fashion industry created a deep discomfort within me, one that did not allow me to move forward in my career pursuits complicit and perpetuating the practices that harmed marginalized people and the environment. With this discomfort at the forefront of my mind, I decided to enroll in the Parsons BFA Fashion Design program due to one of its available pathway programs, Systems & Society. And so, my Parsons journey began as one focused on sustainability, with experiments in natural dyeing and creating bioplastics. But still, my original confrontation from high school with waste and pollution permeated. This brought me to the conclusion that the most sustainable pathway is to use the materials that already exist on this planet, attempting to leave the smallest footprint possible. In an attempt to divert textiles and other materials from landfills, I work to “revive” secondhand and/or recycled materials, while also reviving their narrative significance through introspective examinations of my personhood and daily life.