Exhibit tackling fashion and race boosts diversity dialogue

Given the conversation around diversity that has ignited the fashion industry over the past several years, an exhibition examining race and fashion might seem overdue. It took a professor from Parsons who since 2016 has been teaching an elective class entitled “Fashion and Race” at at the school to deliver it. “Fashion and Race: Deconstructing Ideas, Reconstructing Identities” on show at the Sheila C Johnson Design Center of Parsons offers the public the opportunity, through printed material, multi-media, and garments, to examine the “otherness” with which the industry has long treated people of color who operate within its environs, and to question the Western standard of beauty which has traditionally been seen as the only legitimate aesthetic. The work on display asserts the fashionability of black skin, black hair, black street style––indeed black femininity commands immediate attention upon entry in the form of a dramatic ruby Charles James-style gown with headpiece by Lashun Costor from a collection exploring the violence of the Jim Crow era, entitled “Strange Fruit.”