SPOTLIGHT: Timothy M. Parent '09

The crisscrossing paths in Harvard Yard hardly serve as mock runways for College students, who tend to be more concerned with problem sets and theses than the latest collections from Paris and Milan. Timothy M. Parent ’09 hopes to change this through Project East, a fashion show featuring Asian and Asian-American designers now in its second year. Recognizing a gap in his college experience, Parent took the initiative to bring high fashion to Harvard, satisfying his own interests while also providing valuable opportunities for Asian designers and his fellow students.

Parent has always had a love for fashion, but he felt there was a dearth of ways for him to indulge in this passion. “There aren’t really a lot of creative classes I take or creative offerings [in fashion] at Harvard,” he says while multi-tasking at a model fitting. Parent also believed students were generally apathetic toward fashion, a problem he seeks to rectify.

Enter Project East, an idea he and Kristin S. Kim ’09 conceived the summer after their freshman year. “We saw these great designers in Korea and started thinking about other designers in America that we knew,” he says. “We thought it would be a cool juxtaposition of Harvard and these designers since it’s so unexpected.” What started as an intriguing idea between two friends eventually became a full-blown student-run charity fashion show that features designs by fashion professionals and Parsons graduates.

Parent says his objectives for the event are three-fold. “The first goal is to promote Asian and Asian-American designers and their talent. There are a lot of talented, young, smaller designers that don’t get enough recognition,” he says. “We also want to raise money for the charity Artists for Humanity. And we want to reach out to the Harvard students who are most interested in fashion and its related industries, like music or magazines, which are all things connected to Project East. We want to give people creative outlets, for them to do it on a high level.”

Hoping to reach an even higher level this year, Parent secured Japanese designer Issey Miyake in his first showing outside his own runway in Paris.

Still, Parent has had to overcome more than a few hurdles with Project East. “The biggest challenge was building the show up on itself, on hype, being able to brand something that hadn’t really been done before and getting people to believe in it,” he says. “So many of my closest friends didn’t even believe it would happen.”

The East Asian Studies concentrator is nevertheless quick to credit all those involved with making the show such a success. “We have great people who gave up their lives and really believed in it,” Parent says. “Last year I was literally doing half of the stuff by myself. None of this would have been possible now if all of these people weren’t here with me.”

Although he’s on the administrative end of fashion and doesn’t design clothing himself, Parent has a unique perspective when it comes to his wardrobe. “I definitely push fashion as far as it can go a lot,” he says. “I get stares every day. I get called names at times. As long as I elicit some sort of response or emotional reaction, I think that’s cool. My interest in fashion is bizarrely intense, so I don’t expect other people to like my views.”

A varsity swimmer on top of his Project East responsibilities, Parent has also worked in the fashion world outside of college. His favorite designers include Nicolas Ghesquière for Balenciaga and Alber Elbaz of Lanvin. “Their stuff is really original while still being marketable,” he says.

An internship in the buying department of fashion label Gucci proved unrewarding because it didn’t allow Parent to exercise his artistic inclinations, but he enjoyed his work in Shanghai with designer Lu Kun. As a result, Parent has one condition for his future career: “I need it to be creative.”