Parsons, the downtown fashion college, has new designs — on The New School, The Post has learned.
High-level officials at the Greenwich Village university are in talks to rename the entire institution Parsons, the biggest money-maker among the eight colleges that make up The New School.
Parsons, which charges more than $42,000 a year in tuition, was once the site of the popular “Project Runway” series, where super model Heidi Klum helped judge aspiring fashionista clothing lines.
The show was a hit, and helped raise Parsons’ international recognition.
The silver-haired Tim Gunn, who was the school’s chair and hosted “Runway,” is credited for giving Parsons a makeover.
The administrators involved, including the president, trustees and some faculty, haven’t made any decisions yet, said Sam Biederman, a spokesman for The New School.
The talks are in “very early stages,” he said.
Trustees have informally batted around the idea of renaming the whole school as Parsons since at least the last decade, said Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska senator and ex-president of the school.
“Parsons is the biggest and best known, and in terms of finances, it’s the most important part of The New School,” Kerrey said.
While there have been moves in the past to rebrand the university, this latest effort is farther along than previous moves, some inside the university believe.
There were more than 4,000 undergraduate students enrolled at the fashion school in 2012, about three times more than the next-biggest school, according to the latest available report on the school.
The New School is prepping for its 100th birthday in 2019. It had built a reputation as a progressive school that once brought over exiled German-Jewish scholars from Nazi Germany.
But university leaders are thinking about switching out it’s scholarly past for a fashionable future.
“It’s about money,” said one New School professor. “The design university is something they feel they have that other universities don’t.”
“Rebranding is hard, especially in higher education,” Kerrey said. “Traditions matter. It may be among the most important things they do.”