Lisa Z Morgan has been named chair of the Department of Fashion within Pratt Institute’s School of Design. Morgan will be joining Pratt from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where she served as department head of apparel design since 2017. An accomplished interdisciplinary designer, artist, author, and educator, Morgan will bring a wealth of industry expertise, creative perspective, and collaborative leadership experience to Pratt. She will assume the role on July 1, 2024.
“We are very excited to welcome Lisa to Pratt,” said School of Design Dean Anita Cooney. “With Lisa’s distinctive creative background, exceptional teaching experience, innovative and collaborative curriculum development, and successful leadership experience, I am confident she will be a valuable addition to our community at a time of new growth for the department and new interdisciplinary opportunities for the school.”
As chair, Morgan will oversee approximately 40 faculty and 300 students within both the undergraduate Fashion Design program and Pratt’s new MFA in Fashion Collection + Communication, which will welcome its first class this fall. The department also includes both a Fashion minor and a Textiles minor, which serve students across disciplines.
“My experiences, both lived and in practice, have prepared me to co/imagine the Fashion Department by engaging intercultural competencies and fostering collaborations and methods of sense-filled communication that challenge hierarchical and extractive structures,” said Morgan. “I am thrilled for this opportunity to co-conspire with the Fashion Department and the wider Pratt Institute community.”
In her personal practice, as well as her tenure as an educator, Morgan is committed to sustainability, equity, and interdisciplinary creative cross-pollination. At RISD, she collaborated with faculty, both in her department and across the school, to enhance the core curriculum, emphasizing identity/identities and the social and political implications of dress, and helped develop electives that engage students in creative practices and scholarship that are culturally diverse, experimental, and adaptive.
Morgan has been recognized for her creative work, both individually and as part of collaborations. Her work merges critical inquiry and observation with tactile and embodied creation. She is a co-founder of the artistic practice and couture lingerie brand, Strumpet & Pink, and has exhibited and performed internationally, sometimes using the pseudonym The Pink Investigator. Her work, which has been featured and reviewed in eleven books, as well as in magazines and newspapers around the globe, is included in collections at the RISD Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, among others. She has also contributed to platforms such as The Laboratory Arts Collective and SHOWstudio, and is the author/curator of Design Behind Desire. Morgan views fashion and clothing as powerful tools of communication, believing that a single garment can activate or embody an experience in profoundly meaningful ways. Acknowledging that the fashion industry as a system continues to thrive on a culture of exploitation, Morgan contends that it is not possible to address sustainability without engaging equity-centered systems that are responsive, restorative, and care-filled.
Morgan holds a Master of Art from the Royal College of Art and a Bachelor of Art in Applied Arts from the University of Creative Arts in the UK.