Explore fashion from broad social and cultural perspectives, developing designs that respond to the issues shaping our world. Cultivate your design practice through an innovative program that emphasizes purposeful material resources, contextual relevance, embodiment, and identity.
Making—and Change Making: A Commitment to Craft and Sustainable Design
Our process is deeply hands-on, grounded in material exploration, experimentation, and a commitment to craft. Here in Fashion, you will engage with various ways of making, from digital methods to traditional practices, and prioritize responsive design and sustainability. You can even get your hands dirty in the Textile Dye Garden or master the 3-D knitting machines as you discover the joys and challenges of making.
We approach fashion by exploring how something feels on a body and not just how it looks. This shift to the experiential opens up new possibilities and amplifies what fashion and clothing can do. We move beyond visual aesthetics to explore design that is responsive to emotion, embodiment, and identity and place.
“It’s different from some of the other programs that we know people attended outside of Pratt. Pratt had a big focus on the handwork, making processes, and materiality. To create your own habit of working. Creating our own studio practice started at Pratt, just nurturing this love of making and of designing and creating.”
Sophie Andes-Gascon, BFA Fashion Design ’15 Read More
Join a Creative Community
Your design voice will develop through craft, making, critical thinking, and active engagement with the Pratt community. Our integrated approach encourages you to construct unique garments informed by design theory and sustainable practices, positioning you to contribute meaningfully and responsibly to the future of fashion.
Gianna Breinig & Alma Rosado, BFA ‘27. Mending Circle.
State-of-the-Art Facilities
Our world-class studios and labs provide a variety of resources, including advanced tools such as Shima Seiki 3-D knitting machines, 3-D printers, laser cutters, and Framis NOSO technology. In addition, Pratt students have access to the Material Lab, Textile Research Library, and our transportive Textile Dye Garden right on campus.
Students at work in the knit lab at Pratt. George Etheredge for The New York Times
Gain direct exposure to and hands-on, professional studio experience in the New York fashion design industry through internships at top design companies, including Thom Browne, Alexander Wang, Luar, Monse, Three As Four, Kallmeyer, Tibi, Christian Siriano, Alicia Olive, and Oscar de la Renta. Fashion students are required to complete three credits of internship during their course of study. A Pratt faculty adviser guides each student throughout the experience.
Internships in Sustainable and Ethical Design
We encourage our students to collaborate with brands committed to ethical and ecologically conscious practices, empowering them to create garments that honor both the environment and the artistry of fashion. Brands include:
Founded by Sara Sakanaka, Considered Objects is a sustainable design label rooted in heritage, memory, and artisanal craft. Each one-of-a-kind piece is hand-sewn using reclaimed textiles, vintage kimono, and antique materials, honoring both tradition and personal history. With an intuitive, mindful process, the brand creates emotionally resonant garments that foster lasting connections between wearer and object.
Loup Charmant pioneered responsible luxury by partnering with family-run organic cotton farms in India at a time when such materials were nearly impossible to source. Their commitment to sustainability began with a pledge to support heirloom-quality cotton production and continues today through airy, timeless pieces designed for ease and warmth. Rooted in thoughtful sourcing and enduring relationships, each garment reflects a deep dedication to ethical, effortless living.
Kowtow is a New Zealand–based label committed to slow fashion, radical transparency, and environmental responsibility. Every garment is plastic-free and made from Fairtrade organic cotton within a fully traceable supply chain. Certified by Fairtrade, GOTS, and B Corp, Kowtow offers timeless, modular pieces designed for longevity and ethical living
Our Faculty
Faculty are committed to creating positive change in the expansive industry called fashion. With diverse educational and professional backgrounds, our faculty represent the breadth of fashion design’s complexity, including Susan Cianciolo, Shane Gabier, Adrienne Jones, Brooke Garner, Isa Rodrigues, Gina Gregorio, Andrea Katz, Dean Sideway, and Jane B. Nord Professor of Fashion Design Byron Lars. See all Fashion Design faculty and administrators.
To prepare students to become leaders within the creative community, Pratt Fashion offers a wide variety of resources including access to Shima Seiki 3D knitting machines and Framis NOSO technology, as well as a dedicated Textile Research Library within the department and a Textile Dye Garden on campus. Advanced courses and electives, as well as study abroad opportunities, offer students pathways to explore critical topics including gender, race, size inclusivity and activism through the lens of fashion.
INTERNSHIPS
Pratt students are required to complete three credits of internship during their course of study. Students have the opportunity to explore different aspects of the New York fashion design industry through their choice of internships at top design companies including Thom Browne, Zero Maria Cornejo, The Row, Altuzarra, Maryam Nassir Zadeh, Oscar de la Renta, and Creatures of the Wind. The internship provides them with hands-on experience and professional networking skills, as well as practice in how to write a resume and present their portfolio. A Pratt faculty adviser guides each student throughout the experience, making sure the students’ learning objectives are met.
COMPETITIONS
All Pratt Fashion students participate in annual design competitions including the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s Design Scholar Awards, the Gucci Changemakers Scholars Program, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Student Fashion Design Competition. Integrated into the curriculum, these competitions provide avenues for scholarship support and exposure within the fashion community.
Upon completion of their studies, students:
Students will exhibit fluency in 2D and 3D construction processes that are innovative in cut, shape and silhouette using diverse embodied approaches.
Students will analyze and use properties and principles of materiality to make design decisions informed by sustainable practices.
Students will communicate design philosophy with evidence of fashion history, theoretical underpinnings, and contemporary culture that addresses issues of justice, equity and social responsibility.
Students will design, produce and present cohesive, contemporary and authentic collections that demonstrate their active engagement as collaborative leaders of the creative community.
Showcase Your Vision
Present your work through multiple high-profile platforms that ensure exposure to industry leaders.
Pratt Shows: The Design Show and The Fashion Show
Present your senior thesis collection in two dynamic formats: The Design Show, an intimate exhibition focused on craft and concept, and The Fashion Show, a full-scale runway production celebrating your work in motion. These events include industry previews and a curated lookbook, giving you direct access to fashion experts and potential employers.
Gain national and international recognition by participating in prestigious competitions like the Supima Design Competition, the Woolmark Prize, and Joe’s Black Book. Integrated into our curriculum, these opportunities offer scholarship support and invaluable industry exposure.
Pratt Design Show. Work of Jacob Khalil, Vespers IX, BFA ’26, and Zoey Yulin Xiao, BFA ’26.
Student Work
Watch our annual fashion show and imagine what you might do here at Pratt Fashion! Through rigorous attention to production, technique, and contemporary aesthetics, you’ll develop your design practice and with it, agency to create change.
Senior Student Portfolio Review with Designer Nicholas Daley, 2025.
Connect directly with industry leaders through our acclaimed Black Dress Talks lecture series, exclusive senior previews with industry guests, and intimate in-class critiques from visiting experts. This constant engagement ensures you build a strong professional network and gain invaluable, real-world feedback throughout your time at Pratt.
Study Abroad: Your Global Studio
Expand your design practice on a global scale. Study in major fashion capitals through our partnerships with leading institutions like London College of Fashion and Central Saint Martins at University of the Arts London and Kingston University in London and Paris College of Art. Or, immerse yourself in traditional craft through experiential courses, such as our traditional textile course in Oaxaca, Mexico, and learn from global artisan communities and cultures firsthand.
Career Paths After Graduation
Fashion is a dynamic and expansive industry that offers a wide range of career opportunities beyond the traditional role of a fashion designer. Our graduates go on to shape the field in diverse and meaningful ways.
Career paths include:
Fashion design: specializing in menswear, womenswear, kidswear, wovens, knitwear, cut and sew, textiles, accessories, and footwear
Industry and production: roles in research, concept design, design and development, production, technical design, patternmaking, garment technology, sustainability, and quality control
Fashion business: roles such as buyer, sales manager, and retail buyer
Fashion communications: careers in styling, merchandising, marketing, social media, public relations, and brand communication
Costume design: For theater, opera, ballet, and other performance arts
Textile design and art: Including textile designers for interiors and accessories and independent textile artists
Entrepreneurship: launching and growing independent fashion brands
Our curriculum is designed to prepare students to engage critically and creatively across this wide spectrum, empowering them to find their unique voice and professional direction in the global fashion landscape.
Career Support for Life
Students and alumni can schedule one-on-one appointments with career strategists in Pratt’s Center for Career and Professional Development. A career strategist can work with you to develop your job/internship search strategies and life and business plans, as well as review résumés, cover letters, websites, and other marketing materials.
Thinking seriously about Pratt? Learn more about admissions requirements, plan your visit, talk to a counselor, and start your application. Take the next step.
Building your portfolio can be daunting. We’ll answer your questions and help you feel confident about the portfolio you submit with your application. Start building your portfolio, now.
Find yourself at home at Pratt: our residence halls, student organizations, athletics, exhibitions, events, the amazing City of New York and our Brooklyn neighbors. Check us out.
Meet Giovanna Flores, Pratt alumna, professor, and NYC-based designer, who is proving that creativity doesn't require the backing of a major fashion house.
Known for handcrafting each piece, transforming deadstock and reclaimed materials through upcycling, and embracing an intuitive, experimental design process, Flores is redefining what independent fashion can be. Her work blurs the boundaries between art, craft, and clothing, celebrating individuality, sustainability, and thoughtful production.
As consumers increasingly seek authenticity over mass production, designers like Flores are leading a new generation of fashion rooted in creativity, community, conscious making, and environmental responsibility.
To read more, check out the full New York Times article.
Photo: Tessa Belle Dillman for The New York Times
#FashionDesign #IndependentFashion #Upcycling #SlowFashion #SustainableStyle #NYCFashion #EmergingDesigner #CreativeProcess #FashionInnovation #CircularFashion
We are thrilled to celebrate our faculty member, Susan Cianciolo, who is featured in a recent Art Basel profile recognizing her as one of New York's most original and influential creative voices.
For more than three decades, Cianciolo has worked at the intersection of fashion, art, performance, and craft, building a practice that defies traditional categories. Best known for her groundbreaking label RUN (1995–2001), she fostered a collaborative and community-driven approach to fashion that continues to inspire artists and designers today.
The Art Basel feature highlights Cianciolo's upcoming presentation with Hoffman Donahue at Art Basel 2026, bringing together archival materials, new DIY kits, film, and sculptural works that reflect her lifelong commitment to handwork, storytelling, and creative experimentation.
As an educator, artist, and mentor, Susan continues to challenge conventional boundaries between disciplines while encouraging new generations of designers to embrace curiosity, craft, and individuality.
Congratulations, Susan!
Read the full feature at Art Basel Stories
Photography: Charles Benton & Nick Sethi
@prattinstitute
#SusanCianciolo #ArtBasel #FashionAndArt #RUN #CreativePractice #FashionEducation #FacultySpotlight #EmergingDesigners #ContemporaryArt #FashionDesign
Fashion Design BFA, Fashion Show 2026
Cork, Kerala by Caleb Callahan @cccaalleebbb
Cork, Kerala explores the shared histories of Irish and Indian anti-colonial movements through the language of fashion. Drawing on the ways clothing has served as political protest, revolutionary uniform, and a symbol of community, Caleb Callahan creates a collection that connects two distinct cultures through their common pursuit of self-determination.
By weaving together references from Irish and Indian craft traditions, particularly weaving and embroidery, the collection highlights both cultural specificity and shared resistance. Historical and contemporary influences are collaged into garments that reflect on the enduring impact of colonialism and imperialism across generations.
Through fashion, Cork, Kerala invites viewers to consider how clothing can carry memory, identity, and political meaning, while offering a creative response to institutional forces that continue to shape the world today.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion Design BFA, Fashion Show 2026
Silicon Lung by Auguste Dubois @soggyogg
In Silicon Lung, Auguste Dubois explores the evolving relationship between humanity, technology, and craft. The collection approaches the computer with empathy, reflecting on its transformation from a simple tool into something that increasingly mirrors human behavior, memory, and emotion.
Drawing from Atomic Age futurism and traditional knitting techniques, Auguste creates garments that act as artifacts of humanity, embodying our love, loss, history, and contradictions. The work questions the rapid industrialization of fashion and advocates for the enduring value of the human hand in the creative process.
Combining flatbed machine knitting, SHIMA technology, hand knitting, and hand-built ceramic elements, Silicon Lung bridges the mechanical and the handmade, proposing a future where technology and craftsmanship coexist rather than compete.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion Design BFA, Fashion Show 2026
Farmordotter by Lia Skøien @liaskoien
Drawing inspiration from the Norwegian folk dress, the Bunad, Lia Skøien explores the intersection of heritage, identity, and uniformity. Rich with embroidery, embellishment, and generations of personal history, the Bunad serves as a symbol of an evolving self—one shaped by memory, craft, and tradition.
Influenced by a family history of uniforms, including pilots, Air Force personnel, and flight attendants, Lia contrasts the individuality of folk dress with the structure and anonymity of professional attire. Through reimagined aprons, pilot epaulettes, parachute backpacks, and stewardess scarves, she creates a dialogue between personal expression and collective identity.
Using custom prints and textiles derived from traditional Bunad motifs, Farmordotter reflects on the ways we inherit, perform, and redefine who we are.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion Design BFA, Fashion Show 2026
Wearable Comfort by Xuanyi Li @xuanyyyyyi
Inspired by a beloved plush dog passed down from her younger brother, Xuanyi Li's collection explores the psychology of attachment, comfort, and the profound meaning of repair. Through tactile faux furs, distressed textures, and oversized silhouettes, the collection transforms cherished memories into wearable sanctuaries.
Designed for those seeking security, belonging, and emotional connection, each piece evokes the warmth of a comfort object while inviting personal interaction. Modular and multifunctional elements can be detached and reimagined as scarves, shawls, or accessories, allowing wearers to create their own protective layers and redefine their relationship with fashion.
More than clothing, Wearable Comfort is an exploration of healing, memory, and the enduring power of emotional attachment.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion Design BFA, Fashion Show 2026
Hand Me Down by Marisa Sirichartchai @msrchai_
Hand Me Down explores the transformation of donated garments as an allegory for growing up and awakening to embodiment and womanhood. Centered on the threshold between being and becoming, the collection examines how identity evolves over time and how memory leaves its mark on both the body and the garments we wear.
Drawing inspiration from childhood memories of her mother braiding her hair, Marisa Sirichartchai uses braiding as a metaphor for care, connection, and personal transformation. Strips of donated T-shirts are braided into new textiles, carrying with them the touch, history, and lived experiences of many hands.
Through processes of deconstruction, weaving, and silkscreen printing, repurposed garments are reimagined into new forms. By intentionally revealing seams, signs of wear, and acts of repair, Hand Me Down challenges the culture of disposable fashion and positions clothing as a living archive, one that preserves memory, embodies relationships, and reflects the ongoing process of becoming.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion Design BFA, Fashion Show 2026
The Black Cyborg by Mitchen Hallie @m33chen
The Black Cyborg explores themes of Afrofuturism, Black survival, and the evolving meaning of revolution in an increasingly technological world. The collection examines how technological advancement has historically functioned as a tool of oppression and asks what the future might hold for the Black diaspora within these systems.
Through the figure of the cyborg, Mitchen Hallie challenges narratives that flatten and commodify Black identity to make it more easily consumed. Rather than conforming to these frameworks, this cyborg continuously redefines and reconstructs itself, emerging as a form of “Divine Machinery”—a symbol of resistance, self-determination, and revolutionary possibility.
At its core, The Black Cyborg emphasizes the importance of self-love and self-preservation in the face of systems that seek to dehumanize individuals and reduce them to mechanized components. By merging Afrofuturist thought with powerful visual storytelling, the collection imagines a future where Black identity is celebrated, empowered, and free to exist beyond imposed limitations.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
Fashion Design BFA, Fashion Show 2026
El Futuro y El Alma by Stephanie Silva @steph.ds.jpg
El Futuro y El Alma draws inspiration from Latino-futurism, a genre that reimagines the future through the lens of Latin American identity, history, and resilience. Through thoughtful craftsmanship and extensive hand-made techniques, Stephanie Silva's collection explores themes of labor, community, and cultural reclamation.
As science fiction increasingly reflects contemporary social and political realities, the collection envisions a post-colonial future where Latin American communities reconnect with ancestral traditions, reclaim the value of their labor, and invest their skills and creativity back into their communities.
By merging futurist narratives with cultural heritage, El Futuro y El Alma presents a compelling vision of identity, self-determination, and collective renewal, highlighting the power of fashion as a vehicle for storytelling, resistance, and hope.
@prattinstitute @pratt_sod @prattfashion
