FALLARTS
stitched in
tradition Parker Zinn’s designs weave family heritage and Southern charm into contemporary fashion By M ar t ha Z ay to un
P PHOTO BY GISSELLE COSTA
arker Zinn grew up in a family
ABOVE Parker Zinn was inspired by her hometown to create items such as the Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen top and the beaded argyle basketball shorts on the opposite page.
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chapelhillmagazine.com
September/October 2024
of Chapel Hill creatives. Her dad is a builder with an appreciation for home design. In her free time, her mom does calligraphy. Her grandmother was a potter before pursuing high-end home building. “As a child, I didn’t know or couldn’t really understand any of this,” she says. Her own early creativity wasn’t a product of familial legacy she felt she had to uphold – rather, art is “somehow ingrained in my DNA.” At her childhood home in Chapel Hill, Parker’s elementary school drawings and paintings are framed and displayed on the walls. Each summer, art camp at Cely’s House or Thimble Pleasures was on the agenda, and each school year, she fit art classes into her Carrboro High School schedule. The freedom to pursue art was thanks to her parents who “were always very supportive of our creative ambitions,” she says. It’s her middle school drawings that, in retrospect, hint of a future draw to fashion design. Around that time, Parker learned