Parsons School of Design’s MFA Fashion Design and Society presents GEN 15, the program’s 2026 graduate runway show featuring work by its graduating designers. The presentation takes place inside the studios where the collections were developed, placing the finished work within the same environment used for research, fittings and construction.
SPRING SUMMER 2027
The graduating cohort approaches fashion through personal histories, cultural references and individual research. French-Canadian legend, the African diaspora, Pakistani folklore, post-Soviet domestic life, Black American identity, Indian dress, Scandinavian Romanticism, New York nightlife and childhood memory provide starting points for the collections.
The designers interpret these sources through contemporary methods, developing distinct approaches to proportion, fabrication and silhouette. Personal and cultural references inform new forms without limiting the work to literal representations of their origins.
Material research runs throughout the presentation. Traditional tailoring appears alongside deconstruction, leatherwork, knitwear, embroidery, draping, woodworking, printing, upcycling and 3D technology. Secondhand garments, deadstock fabrics, reclaimed materials and hand-developed textiles introduce another layer of experimentation, with designers considering how the previous life of a material can influence its next use.
Menswear codes appear through tailoring, uniforms, motorcycle clothing, sportswear and denim. Designers alter familiar proportions, expose internal construction and shift the expected function of recognizable garments. Corporate dressing and prep-school references sit beside utility clothing and everyday denim, giving established wardrobe categories new structures and proportions.
The body also influences how the designers approach construction. Silhouettes become exaggerated, distorted, protected, concealed and reshaped as the collections examine masculinity, labor, identity, vulnerability, desire and belonging. These ideas appear through changes in volume, structure and the relationship between clothing and the wearer.
Tailoring plays a particularly important role in this process. Traditional construction techniques provide a foundation that designers cut apart, rebuild or combine with less conventional materials and methods. Workwear and sportswear offer another point of reference, allowing practical garments to become sites for experimentation with proportion, surface and fabrication.
Discover Full Collection on DSCENE
GEN 15 brings these approaches together without imposing one visual direction on the graduating class. Tthe Parsons graduate presentation offers a broad view of the ideas shaping the program’s latest group of designers and the different ways they approach contemporary menswear.
