My name is Lily Shen. I’m a rising sophomore majoring in fashion design. I am almost at the end of my first year studies at Parsons. During these comprehensive courses, I have learned both hands-on and research skills, both were unexpected experiences.
For me, the first semester involves less research related courses. Both my studio and seminar was more about our personal experiences and working on art works. Drawing/Imaging class obviously focused on drawing skills. I also took space/materiality which has taught me how to work with metals, wood and creating 3D form. However, during this semester, almost all of my assignments requires me to sit in a chair and be in front of my laptop. I learned a lot about research methods in both studio and seminar. Studio focused more on non-scholarly research, while in seminar, I learned how to use database to look for scholarly works. In my time class, I had to learn a lot of softwares with zero previous knowledges. In Sustainable Systems, it was definitely more research than experience as well. Finally, my elective class Fashion Culture was a research-heavy class as well.
All the skills comes together at some point. “Space and materiality” and “drawing and imaging” has taught me how to realize my ideas by actually making or drawing them. Time class has enabled me to make videos for other classes if I chose to. Both seminars has made my thought process more complete and sophisticated. And finally, both studio classes has let me view other people’s work and thought process.
I definitely enjoy my fashion culture research more, to be honest. First of all, it’s an elective that I chose. It was also very visual and interesting.
Having to learn making and writing definitely help us express our ideas as designers and artists.
