Les Invisibles (1810) | William Brocas after James Gillray / Metropolitan Museum of Art / Public Domain
In my first semester at Parsons School of Design, I sat in the library, dazedly looking around at other students’ outfits. I noticed someone wearing a denim beret with a long-sleeved white shirt that had images of bones, forming a skeleton laid on their back. They wore a long black skirt made of pretty lace— juxtaposed with aggressive rips and pins with vulgar phrases. The look was completed with white platform boots. The student looked like one of my old Monster High dolls—one that had grown angrier at the world and more confident with age.
In my fashion classes here at Parsons, we learn about the embodiment of dress—the idea that the way we dress forms our articulation of self. I see apparent self-assurance everywhere at Parsons. In the library, I noticed another student in a plaid skirt, the royal Stewart kind. Had they not worn six-inch black-heel boots, the skirt would have dragged on the ground. They flaunted a fuchsia and navy-blue zebra-print blouse that came with an attached scarf. The look was topped off with a navy and yellow retro Nike windbreaker. The colors were all distinct from each other. I looked down at my light-wash jeans and the red wool sweater that I had questioned as I got dressed. (Too bright? Too loud?) I was wearing white sneakers with black stripes and had opted to wear my black leather jacket to match. But once on campus, I started feeling self-conscious. My outfit looked too basic. In my Levi’s 501s, I wondered how I could belong in a building where so many students do innovative work—starting with the shoes they wear.
Despite the vibrant hair colors, chunky accessories, and overwhelming sense of individuality all around me, I have since discovered I was not alone in feeling like a total fraud for attending a world-renowned fashion school in the heart of New York City. My classmates have told me about similar insecurities. Some expressed concern that they don’t feel as cultured as other students, while others worried they didn’t deserve a place in class at all. Why had program directors and professors, who enrich Parsons with their extensive knowledge and field experience, chosen a student with such a limited research background? Even worse, the students worried these inadequacies were written all over their outfits.
“I’ve always dressed up for school, but here at Parsons I feel like I need to dress up with an “effortless” component. I can’t be as experimental and carefree—it has to be more calculated but appear like it isn’t,” Olivia Kulin, a Masters student in the fashion studies program, told me. Kulin prides herself on thrifting, and she combines her finds in layered outfits complemented with boots, belts, and jewelry.
Other students echoed Kulin’s fear. They worry that their outfit will be perceived as unnatural, or as though they dedicated too much time to curating it. They find themselves devoting extra time and energy to dressing for class to ensure their outfit looks like neither time nor energy was involved.
Claudia Sanchez, another student in the fashion studies program, acknowledged that there is more freedom to dress however you desire at Parsons than at her previous schools. “The artistic and creative environment of the school does not feel as judgmental or restricted. You can wear whatever you want,” she said. The flipside is that the sky’s the limit as to what you might wear to class. Sanchez loves to make her own clothing, and she screen-prints quotes and images onto shirts shepairs with fun miniskirts.
“I definitely feel imposter syndrome around the super insufferable fashion students because I don’t keep up with trends, designers, and runway fashion stuff,” said Kayla Mutchler, a fashion studies student who layers her clothes for texture and expresses her femininity through patterned prints. Fashion with a capital F only makes up a small portion of the material taught within the fashion studies program. Students outside the creation-based courses study gender, race, and class as they contribute to what you wear. But the pressure to prove yourself—while not looking like you’re trying to—feels like a school-wide assignment. And everyone is anxiously doing their homework.
