Lisa Z. Morgan has been named chair of the Department of Fashion within Pratt Institute’s School of Design. She succeeds Jennifer Minniti.
Most recently, Morgan was with the Rhode Island School of Design as department head of apparel design since 2017.
Minniti is taking a one-year sabbatical and will return to the department as full-time faculty for the new MFA program. During her sabbatical, she will focus on CarWash Collective with Beverly Semmes, a project reported on by WWD.
Morgan, who began Monday, is an accomplished interdisciplinary designer, artist, author and educator.
As chair, Morgan will oversee about 40 faculty and 300 students within both the undergraduate fashion design program and Pratt’s new MFA in fashion collection and 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.
“We are very excited to welcome Lisa to Pratt,” said Anita Cooney, dean of the School of Design. “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.”
Morgan cofounded the artistic practice and couture lingerie brand Strumpet & Pink, contributing to platforms such as The Laboratory Arts Collective and ShowStudio, and writing/curating Design Behind Desire. Her work has been featured and reviewed in 11 books, as well as in magazines and newspapers around the globe and is included in collections at the RISD Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, among others.
“My experiences, both lived in 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. I am thrilled for this opportunity to co-conspire with the fashion department and the wider Pratt Institute community,” Morgan said.
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 U.K.