MFA Thesis: Heretic

For my final year at Parsons Paris, I was tasked to create a 10-look collection, resulting in 11 looks in total. I was inspired by the relationship that American Gen Zs have with religion and faith. One side is fully embracing the traditional religion of their families, becoming even more extreme in their beliefs, while the other side is getting into New Age Spiritualism, where there is an overlap with the occult and paganistic practices. I was inspired by the later and wanted to create a collection that gave the appearance of a new hybrid religion. I come from a Catholic background, so I wanted to fuse elements of Catholicism with New Age Spiritualism and the occult. When designing a collection, the silhouettes and archetypes are my foundational elements, and for most Americans, their foundation and introduction to faith is through their family’s religion. This is why I created my archetypes and silhouettes from clergy (nuns, priests, cardinals, popes, etc) and Catholic school uniforms, to symbolize the traditional foundation my muse builds off of. I tied in the occult and pagan influences in more additive ways to be symbolic of how a lot of New Age Spiritualists tend to pick and choose their beliefs from other practices, basically personalizing and individualizing their belief system. This can be seen through the prints, embellishments, and accessories.

The photoshoot theme took inspiration from the awkward photos you would see in yearbooks from the 80s and 90s, with the concept being that the muse comes from a traditional Catholic background but has become a pagan occultist and now has to take her yearbook photos for her Catholic school.