As an expression of our identity/ identities, fashion creates and influencescommunity. The Master of Fine Arts in Fashion Collection + Communication takes a radical care-filled position, and offers embodied pedagogies and practicesthat holistically support graduate level fashion design education. The program educates curious makers and advocates for change in the expansive industry called fashion.
Master of Fine Arts in Fashion Collection + Communication
If you are interested in learning more about this program, please contact the Fashion Department at fashiondesign@pratt.edu.
The Master of Fine Arts in Fashion Collection + Communication offers a dynamic trans-disciplinary pedagogical approach that spans design, theoretical analysis, and critical examination. The program provides a holistic redefining of advanced fashion design education with the core making studios buttressed by non-studio courses in research practices, critical theory, and the study of global fashion systems and their impacts and implications.
The Fashion Department’s mission and learning outcomes speak to current global fashion inquiries, emphasizing experimentation and exploration as well as theoretical analyses framed by issues such as materiality, sustainability, social justice, gender, race, and others. With that in mind, a strong emphasis on conceptual development and making creates continuity between the BFA in Fashion Design and the MFA in Fashion Collection + Communication; this confluence is the hallmark of both undergraduate and graduate study programs in Pratt Fashion.
For application questions and information, please visit Graduate Admissions.
Mission/Purpose
The MFA Fashion Collection + Communication program empowers graduates to challenge conventional notions of fashion, positioning it as a powerful tool for communication, social critique, and restorative action. In alignment with the principles of degrowth fashion, our program encourages students to engage in systemic change, fostering well-being wardrobes, alternative business models, and localized fashion ecosystems that prioritize both people and the environment.
Graduates are inspired to take radical positions that question industry norms, using fashion as a means of creating care-filled systems, processes, and narratives. The program emphasizes experimentation, creativity, and theoretical analysis, encouraging students to explore key global inquiries such as materiality, sustainability, social justice, and issues related to identity, gender and race. By redefining fashion as both craft and social critique, students are equipped to make a meaningful impact on the world, reshaping the future of fashion with a focus on ethical, and sustainable practices.
For application questions and information, please visit Graduate Admissions.
Dress rehearsal for 2023 Pratt Fashion Show “ASSEMBLAGE” held at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Culture & Community
The MFA Fashion Collection + Communication program fosters a vibrant, inclusive, and collaborative community where creativity, critical inquiry, and innovation thrive. Students are encouraged to develop their unique design languages while engaging in meaningful dialogue with diverse disciplines across Pratt Institute. This trans-disciplinary environment allows for the cross-pollination of ideas, inspiring students to approach fashion not just as a craft, but as a powerful vehicle for social critique and change.
In our community, students are supported to challenge the status quo, take radical positions on sustainability, justice, and cultural relevance, and shape the future of fashion as a conceptually purposeful practice. The program values experimentation, identity informed expression, and responsive craft based practices. Ultimately, we work together to ensure that all of our students’ creative journeys are responsible, and transformative.
Peillin Chen, MFA Fashion Design + Communication 2026Photo Credit: Jeremy Hutchison
Claire Kovchegov and Nandini Kunalkumar, MFA Fashion Design + Communication 2026Photo Credit: Jeremy Hutchison
The Studios + Labs
The design studio is at the core of your educational experience at Pratt. We consider the design studio a dynamic and creative space where collaboration and mindful learning thrive. This transdisciplinary program offers an innovative model that empowers students to tailor their graduate education, allowing them to focus on their particular areas of interest. Through a combination of transdisciplinary electives, research and studio-based work, students can shape their paths while engaging in innovative and immersive learning experiences.
To guide students in becoming influential advocates and leaders within the creative community, Pratt Fashion provides a diverse variety of resources including access to advanced technologies such as Shima Seiki 3D knitting machines, 3D printers, laser cut, and Framis NOSO technology. In addition, students will benefit from invaluable tools for hands-on learning and innovation, including the dedicated Pratt Study Collection, Textile Research Library and a Textile Dye Garden on campus. Explore facilities.
Students at work in the knit lab at Pratt. George Etheredge for The New York Times
The Faculty
Pratt’s distinguished faculty of outstanding creative professionals and scholars share a common desire to fully develop each student’s individual potential and creativity. The faculty come from diverse educational and professional backgrounds representing the breadth of Fashion Design’s complexity, including Susan Cianciolo, Brooke Garner, Andrea Katz, and Dean Sideway. Faculty connections have fostered partnerships with Downtown Brooklyn Alliance and Navy Yard/Research Yard. See all Fashion Design faculty and administrators.
This seminar will run concurrently with thesis development and culminate in the production of a compilation of the cohort’s MFA work. Through the building of The Book, the course will offer opportunities to explore styling and editorial storytelling, curation, examination of fashion theory through research and writing, among other 2D and 3D expressions. The Book will serve as a platform for the collective voice of the MFA student body, a place to contextualize and document individual perspectives while defining the community ethos of the program. All components of The Book are student-led, directed and produced by the class with faculty and cross-disciplinary support, offering an opportunity for collaboration through a dynamic multi-media presentation.
This course is the third of a three-part series designed to engage students in critical and reflective thinking on the practice of fashion design and the workings of the global fashion industry. Unlike parts one and two of the series, part three is underpinned by a student-written syllabus. Here, each student directs one week of class discussion, choosing a class topic based on their own research interests and focuses. This course connects to students’ thesis work, as it serves as the critical and contextual foundation for their year-long, design-based thesis project.
Engaging the World investigates global fashion systems to understand diverse cultures and communities in an effort to support social enterprise and responsible design practices. The course encourages students to learn beyond the boundaries of a physical classroom environment through community engagement, collaborative practice and exploration of international possibilities. The experience enables graduate students the chance to research political, social and economic factors needed to develop long-term relationships, and possibly reimagine fashion to generate change within local and global fashion systems. This course is offered in both a travel and local format
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
CONFESSIONS OF A GIRL CREATURE by Phoebe Mang | @phoebe_mang
Phoebe Mang’s collection, Confessions of a Girl Creature, stems from a lifelong feeling of not being “a girl” in the right way—smudged makeup, prickly body hair, and jokes that didn’t land. No matter how much effort she put in, it never felt like enough.
As she began to explore these feelings more deeply, she found resonance in female representation within horror. The collection plays with traditional feminine elements—bows, gathers, taffetas—and begins to subvert them through silhouette, furry textures, and unexpected materials. Tailored pieces introduce a masculine edge, creating a nuanced balance between softness and strength.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
FREE HAND by Christen Lee | @christsavedmeee
Free Hand explores outsider art and its rebellious, instinctive nature. By reimagining traditional aristocratic silhouettes and incorporating handcrafted materials, Christen Lee challenges the elitism of the fashion industry to create pieces that feel raw, personal, and deeply human.
The collection is about reclaiming space and honoring the labor of creation—just as she did when she first picked up a pencil as a kid.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
NATURE’S ARCHITECT by Isabella Pedrero | @las_cositas_bbpeds
Nature’s Architect explores the relationship between memory, environment, and design. Growing up in Mexico City, Isabella Pedrero was surrounded by both nature and architecture. With parents who worked in spatial design, she became fascinated by how sunlight, shadows, and organic patterns moved through built spaces.
Inspired by architects like Luis Barragán and William Smalley, the collection reflects how design can transform ideas into physical materials.
Nature’s Architect serves as a reminder that design is not only about what we build, but also what we feel and remember.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
LINGER IN EASE by Yunru Huang | @_yunru
Yunru Huang’s collection, Linger in Ease, emerged from tensions she felt in both her surroundings and herself. In response, she returned to what she enjoys—painting, writing, creating—allowing ideas to emerge naturally.
It began with mindless knitting and “drawing” on the flatbed machine, using weaving techniques to create imagery, which became a form of meditation. The garment construction resembles puzzle pieces—a frame on which patterns can be laid flat. While not entirely zero waste, the approach is low waste and intentional.
Through fine, considered garments made with natural fibers, the collection invites the wearer to feel connected to their environment—sensing breezes and air—easing tension through contrasts in texture and weight.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
WORLDBUILDING by Bel Davies | @annabeldavies_
Ever since childhood, Bel Davies has imagined worlds drawn from books, movies, and video games. She created dreamscapes that became a way to escape low self-esteem and anxiety. As those imagined spaces grew, they transformed into coping mechanisms that followed her into adulthood.
WORLDBUILDING encapsulates those fantasies, blending inspiration from fantasy realms and the natural world with craft techniques like natural dyeing, beading, and surface manipulation.
Playful experimentation brings these imagined worlds to life, now shaped into adult-sized forms through the use of heavy elements like corsetry and chainmail.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
PHYSICAL DEPENDENCE by Ruoshui Wang | @ruo.w04
PHYSICAL DEPENDENCE explores the quiet and intricate nature of human intimacy. Rather than focusing solely on the relationship between body and garment, the collection centers on the emotional distances and invisible connections that exist between people.
Through thoughtful material choices, soft textures, and restrained silhouettes, the designs reflect moments of closeness, separation, and silent understanding. A muted color palette evokes comfort and tenderness, while subtle construction details mirror the tensions found in human relationships.
Each piece acts as both an object and a vessel of emotion, holding space for personal stories, shared experiences, and the quiet complexities of connection.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025.
EDENSFOLK by Georgia James, @artbyghwj
Inspired by people throughout history who have worked to live in harmony with nature—like the land artists of the 1960s and the Kibbo Kift tribe in rural England—Edensfolk is a collection rooted in collaboration with the earth.
Featuring one-of-one photographic prints and pattern-making that reimagines the simple shapes worn by those making their own clothes in nature, each garment is designed to stand alone as an object, yet can be styled into breathable, easy looks that make the wearer feel beautiful.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
INTERFUSION by Griselda Peña | @gris_x_x
INTERFUSION is inspired by the experience of navigating between two cultures, an in-between space shaped by adaptation, blending, and self-redefinition.
Through textiles, Griselda gives form to parts of herself that often go unseen, using material as a tool for storytelling and self-exploration.
The result is a contemporary, fluid collection designed to make people feel confident and comfortable, wherever they exist.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
IMPROV by Haeone Son | @reunited.one
IMPROV explores the relationship between structure and intuition. Initially rooted in planned design, the collection evolved as instinct began to guide the process, often leading to more honest, unexpected outcomes.
Inspired by the improvisational nature of jazz, the work embraces spontaneity within a loose framework. Garment dyeing reflects this concept: colors shift with the environment, while stitch-resist techniques create organic, unpredictable variations.
Familiar menswear forms are reimagined with subtle distortions, striking a balance between control and improvisation in both concept and craft.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
