Carmen Busquets, the entrepreneur, investor and co-founder of Net-a-Porter, believes her career was shaped by her disability. Busquets is partially deaf and wears hearing aids, and was drawn to fashion because “it’s so visual, so creative”.
Now, Busquets wants to support students with disabilities who want to make it in fashion. Through her charity foundation, Busquets is partnering with Parsons School of Design on the Carmen Busquets Award for Disabled Fashion Students. The award will set up an annual $12,500 grant for Parsons students in the MPS Fashion Management program, running from now through the 2027/2028 school year, with applications opening this fall. The recipient will also gain access to the Disabled Fashion Student Program at Parsons, which was set up in 2023 in partnership with Sinéad Burke’s Tilting the Lens and supports five students each year through mentorship and grants. The recipient will be chosen during the application process by Dr. Ben Barry, Parson’s Dean of Fashion, and an elected faculty member.
“Parsons is proud to partner with Carmen on this important scholarship initiative. As a deaf leader in the business of fashion, Carmen is using her platform to bring visibility to the central role disabled people have long played in shaping the industry and to create pathways for the next generation,” says Barry.
“It’s so important to enable design students with disabilities to enter into the industry, they’re bringing a perspective that somebody who doesn’t have that experience would never know in terms of the design process,” says Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) president Steven Kolb.
Busquets has been thinking about her legacy; the Carmen Busquets Foundation was established in 2025, and she organized a massive closet sale to support the Foundation and ensure her collection went into proper hands. With her Parsons award, she wants to further fashion’s support of students with disabilities who are bringing a different perspective to the industry.
“Fashion does have a responsibility to be more adaptive, more inclusive,” she says. “We have created a world where everything has to be perfect when it comes to fashion, thanks to social media. We are all guilty of it. We have to send the message that it’s OK not to be perfect.”
