First Year Internship & Study Week activities!
The first week of March, students could take a break from regular classes and their usual schedule and engage in an array of activities during the annual “Internship and Study Week.” This week has been added to the academic calendar to allow students to catch up on their classes, find internship opportunities during Paris Fashion Week or concomitant events, as well as push the First Year students’ making skills in key areas related to their majors.
Time to make
As regular classes were not running, students had access to classrooms to work on their school projects, as well as personal ones. New dress forms were installed in one of the First Year studios to allow Fashion Design students and anyone who is interested to experiment with fabric, volume and the human shape more freely. The Tech Lab welcomed students too and this special time allowed some to test the machines, from the 3D printers to the laser cutter. Finally, students experimenting with photography used the dark room located in the Project Space.
Internships
Our Internship and Study Week coincided with Women’s ready-to-wear and haute couture’s Paris Fashion Week. As the city was bustling with activity, and specifically Parsons Paris’s immediate neighborhood, students were able to intern for designers and companies and discover the backstage of the fashion design industry and media.
First Year students, thanks to our Career Services Department or sometimes their own work, secured job opportunities with internationally renowned fashion houses such as Vivienne Westwood or Elie Saab, as well as global arts and culture media, among others Purple Magazine. They got to work in incredible locations, like the Palais de Tokyo, a contemporary art center nested by the Trocadero, dominating the Seine River and facing the Eiffel Tower. They took on several positions, based on their personal skills and preferences, becoming showroom assistants, press interns and even contributing photographers. If speaking French is always a plus, not all of the students who interned did so.
Technical Workshops
The Spring semester is an important moment for First Year students as courses directly related to their majors are running. BFA students start their major elective, with AMT students taking Collective Works and Fashion Design students “Drawing: Fashion and Form”. BBA students take two electives: Quantitative Reasoning 1 and Introduction to Political Economy.
Art, Media and Technology
First Year students in the BFA Art, Media and Technology spend 3 mornings perfecting their skills in prototyping and documenting. The workshops led by the Tech Lab team covered 3D modeling and prototyping, basics of visual communication as well as digital documentation of works. Through these activities, students learned both analog and digital skills, making them more polyvalent designers and makers.
Fashion Design
First Year students in the BFA Fashion Design participated in an experimental textile workshop with designer Studio Moon. This project focused on the creative translation between 2D and 3D works. By interpreting and deconstructing an image, students investigated materiality to create their own experimental textile samples.
SDM
First Year students in Strategic Design and Management (SDM) boosted their skills in visual communication through a series of workshops with graphic designer Monica Fraile Morisson. Through these 3 half-day sessions, they pushed their understanding of the design process, from imaging to printing. This workshop also provided extensive exposure to 3 key software used in visual communication: Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign.
