Overview:
Parsons College of Design professor and designer Naika Colas debuted her newest ten-piece capsule assortment, “The Remembering,” on Could 30 at Parsons in New York Metropolis. The gathering attracts on Haitian agricultural traditions and her household ancestry, incorporating supplies like coconut buttons and hand-dyed espresso sacks. The exhibition additionally featured Haitian-owned companies, artists and a panel dialogue through which Colas spoke about her philosophy on clothes as vessels of cultural reminiscence.
For years, Naika Colas pieced collectively tales about her father and grandmother by means of conversations with kin scattered throughout international locations and generations. In her newest capsule assortment, “The Remembering,” these tales take form as clothes.
The Parsons College of Design assistant professor debuted the 10-piece assortment throughout an exhibition on the college’s Manhattan campus on Could 30.
The ten-piece capsule was primarily based on the choices of Haiti: buttons made from coconuts, hand-dyed espresso sacks become “wearable artifacts” and occasional beans glued straight onto prints of espresso flowers on quick shorts.
Her imaginative and prescient was an ode to Haiti, a mirrored image of her grandparents’ intentional decisions, resembling residing a slower life and upholding agricultural practices in Haiti.
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Fashions put on items from Naika Colas’ ten-piece capsule assortment, “The Remembering,” at Parsons College of Design on Could 30, 2026. Photograph courtesy of Jonathan Courchesne.
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Fashions put on items from Naika Colas’ ten-piece capsule assortment, “The Remembering,” at Parsons College of Design on Could 30, 2026. Photograph courtesy of Jonathan Courchesne.
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Fashions put on items from Naika Colas’ ten-piece capsule assortment, “The Remembering,” at Parsons College of Design on Could 30, 2026. Photograph courtesy of Jonathan Courchesne.
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Fashions put on items from Naika Colas’ ten-piece capsule assortment, “The Remembering,” at Parsons College of Design on Could 30, 2026. Photograph courtesy of Jonathan Courchesne.
Colas, who’s additionally affiliate director of MPS Trend Administration at Parsons, constructed the gathering round three threads of longing: grief for a father who died when she was younger, the data that her ancestors had been garment staff, and reminiscences pieced collectively by means of hours of dialog with cousins who carried her household’s story.
These questions of inheritance and distance discovered their method right into a 2025 essay she wrote on a flight to Miami, reflecting on the parallels between Haitian and African American experiences. “How does one bear in mind a land that was by no means totally theirs? How does reminiscence journey throughout oceans, borders, languages, and generations?” she wrote. “How can I faucet right into a land, soil the place I personally was not born?”
The questions, Colas advised the Haitian Occasions, stay unresolved by design, and have grow to be her muse.
She described getting into a near-meditative state whereas stitching, working for hours at a stretch and, in these moments, feeling, she says, the presence of her ancestors.
Slightly than doc that inheritance in writing, Colas embeds it in her clothes — a deliberate selection rooted in her enthusiastic about cultural preservation.
“I speak about cultural genocide the entire time. When you’re writing issues down, it dilutes your tradition and it dilutes your historical past,” she mentioned. “You’re sharing all of those sacred issues with the world. It permits for everybody to tug completely different points of your tradition. Not writing issues down is sacred.”
Creating pathways by means of stitching
In 2024, Colas launched “Stitching for Refuge,” an initiative in partnership with the New York State Division of Labor to offer asylum seekers, migrants and refugees with a background in stitching with alternatives for work within the metropolis’s garment business. This system was born out of a profession truthful she hosted in 2023 with the identical premise.
“I feel trend is definitely dismissed as being superficial and trivial and nearly fairly clothes,” mentioned Ben Barry, dean of the College of Trend at Parsons College of Design, “however I feel the work as we speak exhibits that it’s tradition, politics and neighborhood.”
Doris Dubon, a 46 year-old migrant from Honduras started working with Colas by means of Stitching for Refuge when she responded to a name from town concerning this chance.
“What makes it so necessary to me is that I can really really feel myself change as soon as I began studying about my ancestors.”
Naika Colas, designer and Parsons professor
This system contributors make $25 per hour. For Colas, it’s not solely about truthful compensation but additionally about spotlighting their work.
In the course of the panel, Dubon spoke about studying to stitch from her household and mentioned engaged on a challenge rooted in one other tradition’s traditions had been a significant expertise for her.
Colas additionally invited a number of Haitian-owned companies that share her dedication to sustainability and agriculture to promote their merchandise on the exhibition, together with Lakou Cafe, Papa Rozier, Haiti Coffee and the EducNation Basis.
The exhibition additionally showcased Haitian artists. Artwork curator Yvena Despagne displayed her work publicly for the primary time since 2018, whereas DJ, singer and rapper Bacheler Jean-Pierre sketched charcoal portraits — a nod to the day’s agricultural theme. Later, singer Sherlee Skai carried out her tune “Drained,” inviting viewers members to hitch her through the refrain earlier than Jean-Pierre took the stage.
“Naika is such a ravishing soul. After I take into consideration my work together with her, she’s simply that one that retains us all grounded,” Daniel Drak, director of the MPS program, mentioned. “The attitude that she brings to the work is so genuine to herself and her story and her heritage.”
The complete assortment will probably be obtainable for purchase mid-July.