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"Lucía Cuba, a multidisciplinary professional, is proficient in design, social psychology, and education"

A chat with Luciá Cuba, a multi-talented designer, social psychologist, and educator, discussing fashion education, social equity, and dismantling conventional systems.

Designer, social psychologist, and instructor, Lucía Cuba is among those imparting knowledge.
Designer, social psychologist, and instructor, Lucía Cuba is among those imparting knowledge.

"Lucía Cuba, a multidisciplinary professional, is proficient in design, social psychology, and education"

Luciá Cuba, a renowned Peruvian designer, is making waves in the international academic field with her innovative approach to fashion education at the Parsons School of Design.

Cuba's teaching philosophy is centred around sustainability, critical practice, and social justice. One of the challenges she faces as an active professional is maintaining a critical practice while transforming the educational system from within.

Cuba encourages her students to find their own voice in a saturated market. She believes that their experiences, bodies, knowledges, and desires are legitimate sources of understanding. This approach helps students to recognise their agency and empowers them to challenge the status quo.

Another myth Cuba aims to dismantle is the idea that fashion is a superficial field or exclusively linked to aesthetics. She believes that at its best, fashion can be a practice of care, transformation, and justice.

Cuba's work has been presented in museums and academic spaces in various countries, including New York, Rotterdam, and Puebla. She has also been recognised with prestigious awards such as the Han Nefkens Fashion Award (2014) and the United States Artists Fellowship in Design (2019).

Cuba's approach to fashion education seeks to rethink the curriculum, infrastructure, the bodies we represent, our power and privileges, and the teaching methods that still respond to industrial and exclusionary models. She advocates for unlearning the fragmentation between technique and critical thinking, as teaching fashion design is also teaching politics, representation, agency, and systems.

Cuba is particularly passionate about challenging the idealised notion of the "ideal" body. She works actively to propose more inclusive infrastructures, aiming to dismantle the idea that the ideal body is thin, young, abled, and white.

If her students could only remember one phrase or one moment from her course ten years from now, Cuba would like them to remember that designing is not only about making clothes, but about asking what kind of world we want to inhabit, and how our everyday decisions will affect that world.

Currently, Cuba is a full-time professor at Parsons, where she teaches Fashion and Social Justice and directs the MFA Fashion Design and Society. Despite extensive research, there is no information available about who teaches Cuba at Parsons School of Design or which subjects she teaches beyond her main courses.

Through her work, Cuba is helping to redefine the future of fashion education, challenging traditional norms and paving the way for a more inclusive, sustainable, and socially just industry.

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