Brandon Wen
Duperré Reflection Essay
Language and Culture
One of the most valuable parts of my experience at Duperré was being a fulltime student. I was able to integrate myself fully into the school system, not only in my classes but also socially. Duperré had a very small percentage of international students with the rest of the student body coming from various parts of France and being culturally French. While some students spoke English many did not, forcing me to adapt to the language. I appreciated and enjoyed the amount I was able to practice French and use it daily with other students and teachers.
Being in France was more of a culture shock than I thought it would be.
Having traveled to Europe many times and a few times to Paris, I thought I would have been better prepared for the change. However in the school it took a lot longer than I had realized to become close with friends. After arriving in September, it wasn’t until November that I realized who I was actually friends with and January when I formed friendships that I will continue now that I am here. I normally become friends with people much faster and so this change was extremely isolating in the beginning. However it may have been at the start, I enjoyed being placed in a foreign culture and speaking a foreign language. With American culture being so prevalent in so many countries, I flourished in a completely new environment having to learn and adapt.
Textile vs. form
At Duperré, there is a strong lean towards textiles and working with surface design and treatment. From the very beginning, our projects began with working with small samples, creating essentially swatches of different ways we interpreted the proposed concept through textile research. The final goal of the project was to create a garment formed from the research and sampling that we had done.
Patterning the garment became a secondary job to displaying the textile in an appropriate way. On the contrary, Cornell’s apparel department has a heavy emphasis in patterning, form and fit, so much so that often we never even look at surface design beyond prints and some examples of embroidery. While the fit and patterning of a garment is extremely important, I believe that Duperré opened me to a world of importance that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Textile, beyond utility and what it can do for the function of a garment, is an aspect of beauty that adds a necessary dimension to fashion design. Without the work that I had done at
Duperré, I don’t know if I would have understood that. The work in textiles of the students both in the Fashion and Textile departments at Duperré goes far beyond prints and embroidery, into a world that truly questions and plays with surface and the fabric itself. What is important about being from Cornell and studying at
Duperré and vice versa is being able to take both these sides of design and working them together to design. In other words, one of the most important things that I

learned was creating intense textile research that factors in and influences complex patterning so that both sides of design are equally worked through and thought about.
Expression Plastique
Duperré is an applied arts school and its emphasis is obviously in different areas of study than Cornell. Once important push was the importance of drawing and projects in Fine Arts. In the classes of Expression Plastique, we worked in sketching and illustration, as well as synthesizing ideas in fine arts projects that included things like drawing, painting, sculpting, video and anything else that we saw properly realized our ideas. This work advanced my personal aesthetic because everyday I was working on hand drawings and different renderings of ideas, forcing a certain style to come through my work that would not have been found otherwise.
The practice and benefits of hand drawing at Duperré is another aspect of the school that I believe compliments what I have learned at Cornell.
Emphasis on Design
Being in an Art school, the main emphasis was always in fashion courses. The system at Duperré worked a bit like elementary school, we were placed in a class and with that group of students we took all the same courses and had the same schedule. So if schedules changed or deadlines moved, it affected everyone in the same way. Like I said earlier, the emphasis was always on fashion. For example, if there were deadlines coming up, for example, one in Literature and one in
Patternmaking, sometimes the deadline for Literature would be pushed back a week so that students would have more time and energy to focus on patternmaking in order to make a better project. I truly enjoyed this system, because it gave time to focus on what I believed most important. At Cornell, I sometime have issues with having to put other courses before my design work, because for me, that is where my priorities lie. Being at Duperré I really benefitted from this system and in the end, all my work was better because moving deadlines allowed me to have enough time for all the projects rather than trying to cram several into the same deadline.
My interests in fashion focus primarily on design and concept. I am interested in the creation of ideas over all other aspects of the creative process in fashion. While at an applied arts school, there is definitely a need to understand construction and technique, but at Duperré, all of the creative effort was used to realize design ideas, no matter what the idea was. At Cornell, there is sometimes, in my opinion, a need to fit within the boundaries of the project or to learn a specific method or technique in a project. At Duperré, the ideas were literally all over the place and all kinds of design were allowed. Most importantly, I understood and felt that I was in an environment were the other students valued the same things that I did. In other words, the students at Duperré were focused on making designs that pushed boundaries and explored the realm of the avant-garde. Being in an environment where the students value the same principles as opposed to being in a diverse environment like Cornell, I was able to properly critique my work. When

students, teachers or other people commented on my work, it was an informed critique because there was a base of similar work to judge it by. Above all else, this was the most valuable aspect of being at Duperré, getting to know people and work with those that were interested in art and design and wanted to create meaningful work in that context. The resulting competition and energy was something that pushed my work because I was interested in the same things. Being at a school with a looser structure and an emphasis on subject matter that I believe in was an invaluable experience because of what it allowed me to do, and because of how that system has complimented what I am learning at Cornell.