Solange’s Agency Is Partnering With Parsons On A Virtual Festival For Fashion Students

With colleges closed and graduation ceremonies cancelled, the members of the class of 2020 have seen the last few months of their education disrupted in ways that no one could have imagined. Rather than going out with a bang, their academic careers are coming to a sputtering end. For graduating students at the Parsons’ School of Fashion however, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. The school announced it would be partnering with Solange Knowles and Saint Heron on Here and Now, an immersive virtual festival designed to celebrate the work of final-year students.

“When we realised that we weren’t going to be able to hold our festival in the way we typically would, we started to brainstorm around what we could do, not just for the students, but also for the fashion industry and the creative community,” said Jason Kass, interim dean of fashion at the Parsons School of Design. “Solange and the team at Saint Heron instantly came to mind.”

The singer has close ties with the school and was honoured at the Parsons annual gala in 2018. In classic Solange style, she showed up to the benefit dressed in a daring deconstructed jumpsuit by then-Parsons student Shanel Campbell. That eye for emerging fashion talent has been honed over several years. The canary-yellow confection she wore to the Met in 2016, for instance, was created by David LaPort, a little-known Dutch designer she stumbled across on Instagram.

More recently, Solange has expanded her creative vision beyond the world of style with performances that push the boundaries of fashion, music, and art – her appearance in Grace Wales Bonner’s Devotional Sound project last summer is a prime example. As such, Solange and her creative collective are well positioned to bring a radical new perspective to the idea of an online showcase. “As the world confronts the challenges of our current global crisis, fashion and design communities must embrace new ways to pause, evolve, and adapt,” read the statement issued by Saint Heron. “These challenges open up opportunities to expand growth in our creativity and innovation.”

As of now, full details on the festival have yet to be released. So far, the artist Jacobly Satterwhite, a one-time Saint Heron collaborator, has been confirmed to create a 3D installation or “virtual environment” called Meronymy, which will host the final projects of more than 300 graduating students. What was usually a weekend-long round of fashion events in the month of May, will now take place over the course of a few months, with a programme of online lectures, special performances, films screenings, design workshops, and mentorship sessions kicking off in July.

“In these past weeks, so much of the focus has been on what has been taken away or lost. Right now feels like a moment to come together around that,” says Kass. “We’re not seeing this as a consolation, but rather a new way of celebrating creativity.”