The School of Fashion Move Downtown:

What Should I Save for the Archives?

A Guide prepared by the Kellen Design Archives

At the Kellen Design Archives we collect and preserve materials that tell about Parsons through the decades.

These materials are used all the time by the Parsons and New School community, and by researchers from around the world.

As you prepare for the move, we urge you to set materials aside for the Archives that will help document the School of Fashion.

Under your desk, hanging on walls, in the back of file cabinets, generally hanging around—Parsons history is all around you.

The following pages offer a basic—though not exhaustive--overview of the sort of materials we collect, to help guide you as you prepare for the move downtown.

Drawings and sketchesby students, instructors, and visiting critics

Patterns, and other types offashion design documentation

Fashion illustrations by students, instructors, and visiting critics

Photographs: Prints, contact sheets, negatives, Polaroids, slides, digital files (we accept them all)!

For photos: please write on a separate piece of paper what you know about the image.

But don’t write directly on photographs (front or back), or

put sticky notes on them!

Course catalogs and viewbooks

We really need copies of Parsons catalogs from before the 1980s!

Also, catalogs from Altos de Chavon, Kanazawa International Design Institute (KIDI), Samsung Art and Design Institute

(SADI), and Parsons Paris!

Continuing Education and AAS, too!

Posters, fliers and other publicity materials

Audio and video materialscreated by and for the School of Fashion

CDs and DVDs, thumb drives,disks, external hard drives

Materials related to the Fashion Benefit

Office filesInternal or external correspondence, memos, reports, proposals,

syllabi, minutes, press releases, charts, etc.

Basically, any textual documentation you have in files (or piles)that you no longer refer to regularly.

Are there things you are creating or collecting that haven’t been listed here?

Let us know!

We do not collect three-dimensional objects

We do not accept garments or textiles. (They require special storage conditions.)

The only conditions under which we accept textiles is if they are in the form of a swatch accompanying a drawing, sketch, or some other two dimensional object.

This is okay.

Questions? Please contact the Archives

212-229-5942 (M-F, 10 am – 5 pm)

e-mail archivist@newschool.edu

Thank you!