Word: project
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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Eleganza, Identities, and Project East all participate in worldwide trends of cultural appropriation in couture, but they also redefine the relationship between fashion and the minority community. The particular aesthetic goals of these shows vary based on the nature of their individual relationships with ethnic communities on campus—yet all three remain committed to pursuing charitable ends despite funding complications. The product is a wholly new breed of fashion show...
Eleganza, Identities, and Project East engage in the same kind of cultural synthesis on a smaller scale. By interweaving the minority communities and the fashion industry, these three shows disengage the former from its customarily passive role as a source of influence for the latter. They carve a new, active role for their respective communities to influence the perception and message of fashion on campus...
While Eleganza seeks to democratize fashion, Project East tries to maintain and celebrate its elusive haute couture nature. The designers are either high-end stars like Derek Lam and Vera Wang or students at the prestigious art colleges Parsons, The New School for Design, or Rhode Island School of Design. These clothes represent avant-garde thesis projects of student designers and the seasonal collections that debut on fashion capital runways...
...Project East turns its sights on another industry stereotype: that Asian designers only make Asian clothing. “This is clearly generalizing and stereotyping, but I feel like when people think of an Asian designer, they assume dragons and kimonos,” says Kristin S. Kim ’09, co-founder. “That’s an inherent quality of Asian cultural fashion, but I think what Project East does is bring forth people who happen to be Asian and who are designers in mainstream America—making clothing not for an Asian audience...
Within an increasingly crowded and competitive field of student groups, these fashion shows find their affiliations with cultural organizations and institutions a great financial asset. Last fall Project East, committed to remaining an entirely Asian-American and Asian enterprise, was sponsored by the Reischauer Institute, which supports research on Japan, and the Korea Institute. Says Harel-Cohen, “there are these very big student organizations associated with minorities. We were linked to different Asian organizations on campus because they can raise the money. It’s much easier to do it from that framework than to just...