Home Sweet Home (with the forever-lasting pine to shortly return to New York)

New York as a fashion capital can clearly be a financially rewarding city to launch in, as a designer. Having to respond to Fifth Avenue expectations, restraint is put on many design students. However, the cost of dumbing down your concepts as an up and coming designer seems a small sacrifice to make for the meantime.
After graduating, the prospects of holding a concession in one of the big department stores is clearly one of the ultimate financial goals of many. This is all but evident in the minds of the next graduates, hoping to attract a key player in New York's business focused industry.

Walking around the streets of New York however, I was reasonably surprised. Many youths of New York were evidently able to adopt the street style that London is so notorious for holding. Eighties inspired Reebok high-top workouts were seen on the feet of many youths, along with slogan Jacobs t-shirts- each youth expressing unique styles that look as naturally formed as many Londoners manage.

Participating on the Parsons project helped me to gain an insight into how business driven New York is compared to London and how this attitude is even passed down right through to the teaching.
With the diversity that New York holds, and the numerous avenues that are readily available to explore, I learnt that it is a market that could appeal to most.

The project was an excellent opportunity for the capitals to interweave and represent the industry market from opposite ends of the Atlantic. It gave students from London the opportunity to gain an insight into the history of New York and why exactly New York is driven from a business concept. It also gave us the opportunity to see if it is a market that we would feel more comfortable working in.

However I feel that the project would have worked better if we had more of an opportunity to develop more of an idea behind each of the designers concepts and their aims as a future designer. This would have given us all more of an opportunity to gain information and contacts for our future.