About our Creative Director:

Jillian Jo Parisi, Twenty3rd Street's founder and creative director came into the design world through a most unique route: economics. After graduating high school, regardless of the encouragement from her teachers and family -- Jillian opted for a future that was practical and safe. While art was her true passion, she never looked upon the term "starving-artist" with much appeal -- so she became an economics major.
After two years of college, she was faced with the understanding that she could no more work in economics than she could sit in the corner of her living room and watch the paint peel off the walls (regardless of the pay). So she left everything that she knew, all of her ideas of what her future would hold, and took a flying leap out of her 'comfort zone' -- all in the name of that unignorable passion.
So Jillian became a 'starving-artist.' She never really liked money much anyway. She loved food though -- but there were sacrifices to be made. So she abandoned her safe, totally practical plan and applied to the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where she would wipe the slate clean and start over completely as a graphic design major.
Since then she has had the absolute pleasure of living a life where work and play can be one in the same. And now with her inception into the design world, she has found that 'kinda-okay-fed-artist' is a term that seems much more fitting.

Jillian's talent and incredibly hard work has placed her among some of the most skilled and esteemed designers and creative directors in the world. She has had the pleasure of working for and along side these designers and directors on many incredible projects-- doing work for the New York Times Magazine, Levi's and Mulberry, and famous fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi -- just to name a few.
While Jillian has worked on many different projects for many great companies and creative directors, her greatest challenge yet is to achieve success with her own studio by reaching an ideal that will challenge even her own quality of care and craftsmanship. Jillian currently designs for Paper Magazine in New York City.