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
LIMINALITY by Yalei Fang | @yalei_offical
Liminality explores the transitional space between tradition and modernity, memory and future. Using fashion as a medium to question how cultural identity evolves, Yalei Fang redefines nostalgia and femininity through garments rooted in transformation.
Inspired by the cultural shifts of the 1990s, the collection blends Eastern and Western aesthetics, reimagining the qipao in contemporary silhouettes that balance structure and fluidity. Laser cutting, silkscreen printing, and digital textile development echo the precision of Chinese papercutting while embracing modern innovation.
By merging stretch fabrics with rigid felt and layering distorted prints with tonal micro-patterns, Liminality creates a visual language of transition, where heritage and progress coexist in motion.
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Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
NAKED IN THE SAVANNA by Bora Erden | @3ora_
Naked in the Savanna explores stillness, beauty, and elegance within desolate landscapes. Inspired by the quiet grace of the Guinea Fowl and the vast calm of the African savanna, the collection engages with both literal and symbolic nakedness.
Delicate dotted patterns, drawn from the bird’s plumage, echo fragility and resilience, appearing across fluid silhouettes and structured forms. References to Herbert List’s photographs of the male nude and Jun Kaneko’s ceramics deepen the narrative, where rhythm and surface express vulnerability.
These elements create a suspended world where solitude becomes a space for reflection, emotion, and quiet transformation.
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Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
EMOTIONAL ARMOR by Ava Truckenbrod | @avatruckdesign
Emotional Armor examines the quiet conflict beneath intimacy, where tenderness and vulnerability carry the threat of emotional exposure. Tracing the invisible lines between desire and protection, each piece embodies the tension between offering and withholding.
Through layered silhouettes, concealed closures, and contrasting materials, the collection explores the contradictions of feminine connection, where softness is expected, but fear quietly shapes every gesture.
This internal push and pull reflects the fragile experience of navigating closeness while retreating into self-imposed isolation. Emotional Armor opens a space for reflection on trust, connection, and the performance of vulnerability.
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Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
DISSOCIATION by Angie Yutong Zhou | @ang1e__
Dissociation transforms an internal struggle into a tactile, visual narrative. By bridging physical textures with emotional states, each piece invites intimate engagement, offering comfort within discomfort. Structured leather and soft knits, the collection explore the contrast between resilience and vulnerability. Wave-like forms symbolize the ebb and flow of anxiety, while intricate knitting patterns reflect confusion and doubt.
These tensions mirror the fragmented experience of feeling both present and absent within one’s own body. Dissociation opens a space for reflection and conversation around mental health, identity, and the invisible complexities of being.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
IN TANDEM by Lily Lonigan | @li.el.lo
In Tandem bases itself on the idea that Lily is a product of her environment. She takes inspiration from the lives and interests of her parents and the particularly designed environments in which she was raised. The collection pulls from memories of furniture, her mom’s gardens, her dad’s car interiors, and symbols of their past work such as her dad’s sneaker designs.
In Tandem is a practice of nostalgia and familial gratitude, piecing together through fragments of memory, spaces that don’t exist anymore. There is an emphasized consideration for silhouette, layering, and texture, with a focus on mixing materials and manipulation techniques.
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Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
THE MISFORTUNES OF EUGENE by Noah Luca Weisberg | @caspianera
THE MISFORTUNES OF EUGENE is a pseudo-autobiographical collection told through the lens of Eugene, a pitiful middle-school nerd navigating bullies, awkward crushes, and an overbearing mom, all while desperately trying to survive adolescence.
Alongside an illustrated children’s book, this satirical collection transforms moments of middle-school misery into storytelling garments. Hidden stolen tests line Gregory’s gym shorts, Alice wears her 1st place ribbon as a top, and Eugene’s anti-pantsing shorts become a quiet act of rebellion.
With humor, vulnerability, and richly layered design, Noah Luca Weisberg brings Eugene’s misfortunes to life, blurring the line between fiction, memory, and fashion.
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Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
I’M A PUNK BUNNY by Joy Qiu | @zing.qiu
I’M A PUNK BUNNY is where leather, fur, and denim go to fight knit, cotton, and mesh. For Joy Qiu, punk is about holding yourself together with passion and identity.
Inspired by metal music, Japanese punk, and her East Asian culture, Joy uses this collection to express individuality within a very homogeneous society. She utilizes denim, fur, and leather as representations of skin—to be turned inside out, to be destroyed, to be reconstructed.
With this work, she hopes her aesthetic can innovate a new style based on her understanding of contemporary punk, one that makes people feel cute, cool, fun, and elegant all at once.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
COGS IN THE WHEEL by Jiahe Heidi Du | @pantherinn2023
Cogs in the Wheel is a history-based character study constructed by Jiahe Heidi Du. The first look begins with Drama Yoshiko, a controversial female spy in the Second Sino-Japanese War of the 1930s. She is a villain, a bisexual dominatrix, a ridiculous peacock.
Another figure is a drug-addicted empress with a hunchback and drooping shoulders—a child emperor of a fallen empire, with a tiny shoulder and a floor-length shabby coat featuring ladder stitch and unfinished tailor stitch.
The collection also includes characters drawn from more personal inspiration. Heidi’s grandmother, born in the year of the dragon, 1952—just seven years after the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War—became a point of reference. Inspired by her look, Heidi created additional fictional characters: Lady Butcher, a special big girl surrounded by prejudice and bias from her neighbors, and a prostitute in shadow, whose face can never be seen.
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Fashion BFA, Fashion Show 2025
DRIVING HOME by Lillian Krueger | @puppydog_lillian_coolvids
Lillian Krueger’s collection, Driving Home, is a love letter to her upbringing in the American Midwest, an exploration of how those early experiences shaped her values, personal taste, and life today as a young adult in New York.
Deeply inspired by shared moments with loved ones, Lillian uses familiar fabrics and recognizable silhouettes to evoke warmth and connection. Her goal: to create pieces that feel comforting and empowering—clothes made for a wide range of people who find confidence in ease and emotional resonance.
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