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
ATTACHMENT WOUNDS by Kalen Whitehead | @_kwhitehead
Attachment Wounds explores Kalen Whitehead’s relationship with her mother through the lens of psychology and attachment theory, a subject that has deeply informed both her academic and personal journey.
Rooted in John Bowlby’s theory, the collection reflects on how early relational strains leave lasting impressions. But rather than focusing solely on rupture, it also honors reflection, growth, and enduring love.
Through knitting, felting, macramé, and weaving, Whitehead constructs a visual language shaped by techniques and symbols passed down from her mother. The collection contemplates attachment, womanhood, and inheritance, examining how identity is formed through, alongside, and in contrast to the women who raise us.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
WITHIN THE GROVE by Amelia Yetter | @ameliayetter
Within the Grove reflects on the generational bonds between the women in Amelia Yetter’s family, honoring what they have done and what women continue to do through craft, care, and connection over time.
Motifs expressed through hand knitting, cross stitching, hand sewing, and medieval patterning form the foundation of the collection’s visual language. These traditional techniques serve as a bridge across generations, illustrating how the labor and experiences of past women have shaped the designer’s own path.
Within the Grove is a quiet celebration of legacy, of memory held in stitches, stories passed through thread, and the enduring strength of women’s work.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
SERAPHIM SLIDING BACKWARDS by Henry Hitchcock | @polarist.live
Seraphim Sliding Backwards reflects on the nature of loss and the quiet beauty of the obscure.
To be lost is to be assimilated into obscurity, yet in the fog of antiquity, there is meaning to be found in the lack of form. There is comfort in the thickly woven blanket of loose ends that entraps this world of the forlorn.
Meaning emerges amongst the flock of the unimportant; there is value in the desire to wander through the vale of the obscure. In that wandering, one may find serenity amongst the dry leaves of meaning, leaves that have fallen so far from the branches they once rested upon.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
OVERGROWTH by Jude Mikulencak | @stuffbyjude
Overgrowth explores the fragmented memory of parental divorce through the lens of an imagined overgrown, foggy winter forest, a visual metaphor for emotional distance and fading recollection. The forest becomes a symbol of loss and disorientation, shaping the collection’s core visual language.
Hand-beaded vines stretch across bodices like creeping growth, while chaotic ruffling mimics wild, untamed foliage. A muted, grey-heavy palette is broken by dull burgundy, purple, and blue, evoking a sense of distant, half-felt emotion. Heavy wools offer protection from a cold, desolate landscape, contrasted by the ghostlike softness of silk.
Structured tailoring forms a cocoon, guarded and composed, while exaggerated ruffles erupt around it, expressing the unpredictable chaos of memory and emotion. Overgrowth is a journey through loss, confusion, and the quiet beauty of what remains.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
THE OTHER SIDE by Zhengyu Zhou | @zhengyu__zhou
The Other Side explores the fluidity of gender through form, texture, and silhouette. Inspired by the tension between traditional masculinity and femininity, Zhengyu Zhou merges triangular and hourglass shapes to create garments that embody hybrid identities.
Techniques such as body shifting, deconstruction, and cutting planes mirror the emotional process of breaking free from societal expectations. Structured tailoring in wool and cotton shirting is layered with soft knits, reframing familiar codes of power and vulnerability.
Rendered in muted tones of gray, blue, and pink, The Other Side blurs binaries and opens space for new expressions of gender—fluid, personal, and evolving.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
ORIGIN by Xinjun Lu | @xinguxx
Origin recalls the memory of hospital visits in childhood, moments that resurfaced during a depressive time. The smell, the clash of instruments, the cries of children, the sounds of toys, and the ticking of the clock once formed an unlikely lullaby.
The atmosphere of the hospital, as origin, inspires Xinjun Lu to return to that space through design, capturing sound, sensation, and texture. Using music as a starting point, she interprets sound through thread sketching, a technique that allows her to draw with stitches instead of simply sewing fabric.
The color white runs throughout the collection, evoking the feeling of drawing thoughts onto a blank page. With a focus on emotional response, Xinjun Lu chose pure cotton to prioritize comfort and sensitivity for the wearer.
Origin becomes a space of quiet relief, an emotional treatment through texture, memory, and form.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
SIMEMORY OUTSOURCING by Hiosuthe | @hio_sut_he
Simemory Outsourcing explores the phenomenon of memory in the digital age, fragmented, filtered, and increasingly offloaded to screens and servers.
Through heat-reactive textiles, reflective surfaces, and knits developed from film negatives, hiosuthe visualizes the fragile interplay between lived experience and digital recollection. The collection explores the shifting boundary between organic memory and algorithmic preservation, where emotion becomes data and nostalgia is rendered in code.
Each garment becomes a wearable archive, shaped by light, temperature, and time, reflecting how we remember, and what we forget, in a world of constant documentation.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
NACIMIENTO DE LA FLOR by Kylei Casmire | @kyleimilaan
Nacimiento de la Flor celebrates all body types through delicate, color-integrated fabrics and intentional craftsmanship. Inspired by the silhouette of orchids, Kylei Casmire’s collection flows with organic refinement, featuring natural fibers, hand-dyed treatments, and sheer, multilayered looks finished with care and precision.
Each piece is designed to feel as beautiful as it looks: confident, comfortable, and undeniably sexy. Garments are created to mix and match seamlessly, empowering the wearer to express their style with ease and fluidity.
From fabric treatments to finishing touches, every detail reflects a deep commitment to thoughtful design, an ode to beauty in all its natural forms.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
INTROVERSION by Aries Huilin Zeng | @huilinzeng
Introversion explores the emotional duality of those who live inwardly—where vivid bursts of saturated color bleed into muted gray, capturing the collision between inner turbulence and outer stillness.
Informed by the quiet complexities of introspection, Aries Huilin Zeng crafts silhouettes that hover between retreat and reach. Draped forms and sculpted structures suggest bodies shielding and revealing themselves in equal measure. Shifting fabrics, from soft to sharp, mirror the instability of emotion beneath composed exteriors.
Each look becomes a fragment of an interior world, where silence is charged with color and restraint carries a hidden intensity. Introversion is not absence, but presence—vibrant, pulsing just below the surface.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
