The word “radical” was given a moment of considerable thought in the middle of a conversation with Lisa Z. Morgan, the fashion department chair at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
“I believe in radical positions,” she said. “I think there’s often a sense that if it’s something that’s care-filled, it’s not going to be radical, you know?”
She was referring to Fashion Collection + Communication, Pratt’s two-year Master of Fine Arts program that began classes in September with its first 16 students.
Ms. Morgan said the program was intended to encourage students to think critically about themselves and about the fashion industry, and to search for solutions to climate, social justice and supply chain concerns. For example, in addition to traditional classes on pattern cutting and sewing, the curriculum lists a class called Contemplative Practices, teaching students how to connect with themselves via breathing practices and meditation.
The program, which has an annual tuition of $64,050, is now accepting applications for its second class, beginning September 2025.
New York City has three well-known design schools: Parsons School of Design, part of the New School system, whose graduates include Marc Jacobs, Tom Ford and the photographer Steven Meisel and was popularized by the reality show “Project Runway”; the Fashion Institute of Technology, Calvin Klein’s alma mater; and Pratt.
Pratt also has impressive alumni, including Jeremy Scott, the former creative director of Moschino. And the institute, established in 1887, has a distinctive profile, both in its main location in Brooklyn (the other design schools are in Manhattan) and its approach to learning. Ms. Morgan referred to “care-filled and restorative and responsive practices” and the “tension” between “taking a stand in fashion” and “tenderness.”
Jennifer Minniti, Pratt’s former fashion chair, is considered by her colleagues to be the “mother” of the program, (with input from Tessa Maffucci, the department’s assistant chair and Dean Sidaway, an associate professor and the M.F.A.’s coordinator.)
“When I was considering the M.F.A., it was really an extension of the undergraduate Pratt fashion B.F.A.,” Ms. Minniti said in a phone interview from her sabbatical in Florence, Italy. “With that in mind, we really wanted to place a strong emphasis on conceptual development and making so that we could have this continuity between the existing B.F.A. and a new M.F.A. in fashion.”
It also was structured to attract individuals with varied backgrounds, not just those coming through the traditional fashion undergrad pipeline.
For instance, Eliza Corderman, 26, who graduated from the University of Vermont with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and art, is a student in the inaugural class. “I wasn’t sure if I was ready to go down this path and what I loved about Pratt’s new fashion M.F.A. program is it really seemed to combine the critical lens of the industry with the actual creative, making part,” she said. “I love the theory combined with the actual making.”
Ms. Minniti said she began working on the program in 2021 but was delayed by the pandemic, which actually allowed her to spend more time planning: “The intent was how do we create this really special, really unique program that is blending critical theory, fashion studies, fashion thinking with the studio M.F.A. practice where students are actually making and involved with that tactile process.”
Students learn the basics of fashion making, such as draping, working on the form and research, and then specialize in craft forms such as knitwear, textile creation and dyeing, or the reinvention of vintage or disused garments. They will be expected to intern with a fashion or craft designer or house, and then do a thesis that, unlike most fashion courses, would not have to be a multilook collection but instead could take many forms.
The program operates on a 33,000-square-foot upper floor in the Pfizer building, a former factory that houses Pratt’s graduate offerings.
Among its instructors is Susan Cianciolo, the New York fashion designer turned artist, whose fashion was included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2021 exhibition “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.”
She said she was eager to teach next semester because it would be a studio course with a lot of independent work: “I just am never, ever telling anyone how to design, or what to do, but it’s more just joining in conversation.”
When a student goes into a master’s program, she said, “I think it’s because you love what you’re going to work on more than anything in life, because it’s a lot of work to focus and commit.”
The program’s focus on having students rethink fashion also has excited Mr. Sidaway, a British designer whose work was featured in Italian Vogue and W magazine. “We can think about, like, materiality,” he said. “We can think about, I know the word is very overused, but we can think about like systems of how we design, how we approach design.”
Pratt’s undergraduate and graduate programs both look at fashion holistically, Ms. Morgan noted: “Nothing just can exist in its own orbit anymore. Everything has a ripple effect.”
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