FASHIONING BELONGING: A Curricular Collaboration Between Parsons BFA Fashion Design and D&A Group

Under the theme Fashioning Belonging, Year 3 BFA Fashion Design students in the Fashion Product pathway set out to investigate how design can give voice to communities, honor diverse identities, and challenge systems of exclusion, with D&A Group's edge paint and surface-finishing systems as core tools of expression. A masterclass led by the D&A team opened the collaboration, sharing professional craft standards and expert material application. In their Design and Specialized Studio courses, students moved from design inquiry, material research and prototyping through to a refined body of fully realized fashion products. D&A returned for the mid-process critique to contribute industry perspectives and help select work for final realization. D&A Group's finishing systems, edge polymers, primers, fillers, color layers, and topcoats, functioned not merely as technical resources but as a conceptual medium, allowing students to articulate ideas around belonging, memory, and cultural sensitivity, producing work that is at once technically ambitious and socially engaged. Learn more about our BFA Fashion Design program at: https://www.newschool.edu/parsons/bfa-fashion-design/ PARTICIPATING STUDENTS: Chris Chan Thomas (Yutao) Chen Nova (Junyi) Cheng Kiona Fisher Emerson Fleurant Chiweng Gan Finn Hackney Karen (Silok) Lei Capri Lico Zeri Lopez Ellie Odle Grace Park Xintong Pei Robert Price Sophia Rocco Kunye Shen Diaxi Sun Hannah Sun Maria-Luna Vallejo Jimenez You Wu Jiayi Zeng Ruo