Overview:
Parsons School of Design professor and fashion designer Naika Colas debuted her latest ten-piece capsule collection, “The Remembering,” on May 30 at Parsons in New York City. The collection draws on Haitian agricultural traditions and her family ancestry, incorporating materials like coconut buttons and hand-dyed coffee sacks. The exhibition also featured Haitian-owned businesses, artists and a panel discussion in which Colas spoke about her philosophy on garments as vessels of cultural memory.
For years, Naika Colas pieced together stories about her father and grandmother through conversations with relatives scattered across countries and generations. In her latest capsule collection, “The Remembering,” those stories take shape as clothing.
The Parsons School of Design assistant professor debuted the 10-piece collection during an exhibition at the school’s Manhattan campus on May 30.
The ten-piece capsule was based on the offerings of Haiti: buttons made of coconuts, hand-dyed coffee sacks turned into “wearable artifacts” and coffee beans glued directly onto prints of coffee flowers on short shorts.
Her vision was an ode to Haiti, a reflection of her grandparents’ intentional choices, such as living a slower life and upholding agricultural practices in Haiti.
Colas, who’s also associate director of MPS Fashion Management at Parsons, built the collection around three threads of longing: grief for a father who died when she was young, the knowledge that her ancestors were garment workers, and memories pieced together through hours of conversation with cousins who carried her family’s story.
Those questions of inheritance and distance found their way into a 2025 essay she wrote on a flight to Miami, reflecting on the parallels between Haitian and African American experiences. “How does one remember a land that was never fully theirs? How does memory travel across oceans, borders, languages, and generations?” she wrote. “How can I tap into a land, soil where I myself was not born?”
The questions, Colas told the Haitian Times, remain unresolved by design, and have become her muse.
She described entering a near-meditative state while sewing, working for hours at a stretch and, in those moments, feeling, she says, the presence of her ancestors.
Rather than document that inheritance in writing, Colas embeds it in her garments — a deliberate choice rooted in her thinking about cultural preservation.
“I talk about cultural genocide all of the time. When you are writing things down, it dilutes your culture and it dilutes your history,” she said. “You’re sharing all of these sacred things with the world. It allows for everyone to pull different aspects of your culture. Not writing things down is sacred.”
Creating pathways through sewing
In 2024, Colas launched “Sewing for Refuge,” an initiative in partnership with the New York State Department of Labor to provide asylum seekers, migrants and refugees with a background in sewing with opportunities for work in the city’s garment industry. The program was born out of a career fair she hosted in 2023 with the same premise.
“I think fashion is easily dismissed as being superficial and trivial and just about pretty garments,” said Ben Barry, dean of the School of Fashion at Parsons School of Design, “but I think the work today shows that it’s culture, politics and community.”
Doris Dubon, a 46 year-old migrant from Honduras began working with Colas through Sewing for Refuge when she responded to a call from the city regarding this opportunity.
“What makes it so important to me is that I can actually feel myself change once I started learning about my ancestors.”
Naika Colas, fashion designer and Parsons professor
The program participants make $25 per hour. For Colas, it’s not only about fair compensation but also about spotlighting their work.
During the panel, Dubon spoke about learning to sew from her family and said working on a project rooted in another culture’s traditions had been a meaningful experience for her.
Colas also invited several Haitian-owned businesses that share her commitment to sustainability and agriculture to sell their products at the exhibition, including Lakou Cafe, Papa Rozier, Haiti Coffee and the EducNation Foundation.
The exhibition also showcased Haitian artists. Art curator Yvena Despagne displayed her paintings publicly for the first time since 2018, while DJ, singer and rapper Bacheler Jean-Pierre sketched charcoal portraits — a nod to the day’s agricultural theme. Later, singer Sherlee Skai performed her song “Tired,” inviting audience members to join her during the chorus before Jean-Pierre took the stage.
“Naika is such a beautiful soul. When I think about my work with her, she’s just that person who keeps us all grounded,” Daniel Drak, director of the MPS program, said. “The perspective that she brings to the work is so authentic to herself and her story and her heritage.”
The full collection will be available for purchase mid-July.
