NICHOLAS DALEY HONORED WITH THE 2025 PRATT FASHION VISIONARY AWARD

On Friday, May 16, at Powerhouse Arts in Brooklyn, Pratt Institute held its 2025 Pratt Shows: Fashion—the school’s 124th annual showcase of collections by emerging designers graduating from Pratt’s BFA Fashion Design program this May. This year, Pratt honored London-based menswear designer Nicholas Daley.

Pratt Institute President Frances Bronet welcomed guests, “Our work as creatives and as vital cultural, social, and economic producers has always been significant, and we must celebrate our invention and commitment in the public domain. These moments where our community understands the rigor we pursue, the imagination we propel, the worlds we responsibly shape, and the businesses we vest are more important than ever. And our values are reflected in the multifaceted talent and ethos of our honoree this year. Nicholas Daley continues to redefine and refresh contemporary menswear, incorporating his personal backgrounds and history into his fashion, his music, his cultural narratives. We are absolutely thrilled to honor him tonight.”

The sentiment was echoed by GQ Global Director Will Welch, “The award Nicholas is receiving tonight is the 2025 Pratt Fashion Visionary Award. While that sounds very grand, and for me conjures images of globality and scale, I think what is so special about Nicholas’s work is its specificity. The collections tell the stories, to give one example, of West Indian people who arrived in the UK in the middle of last century looking for opportunity and work, their specific Caribbean subcultures colliding and mixing, sometimes beautifully and sometimes violently, with very specific English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh subcultures. You see, through his work, Nicholas shows how all culture starts as subculture. That even globally resonant stories start simply and locally.”

Nicholas Daley humbly accepted the award, thanking his community and network of support— “I went to the campus two days ago to meet some of the seniors for the second time. And as Will mentioned, [last week] was my first Met Gala, my first time having my pieces exhibited in The Metropolitan [Museum’s Costume Institute], and [similarly] tonight [is the students’] first runway show, so I was trying to keep their nerves down and let them know that even 10 years of me doing the brand and growing it, I’m still learning, I’m still going through this journey. And that journey is only fulfilled by people in this room—people who I haven’t met who I look forward to meeting tonight after seeing the show, but also people who’ve known me since the start.”

Daley continued, “People are showing me a lot of love in New York, and it feels like a second home. So I look forward to connecting with Pratt and the campus and working more closely if I’m able to bring more of my energy and experience to the next generation, and you know, every generation there’s more progression. And I think the Met Gala was a beautiful moment for being a British Black designer and an exhibition which . . . is an incredible moment for Black designers, and I think we’ve always used clothing as a way to fight oppression and talk about our stories and why, you know, I think it’s really important that this award is also selected by myself to hopefully inspire more people from all different walks of life to tell their stories through fashion and clothing.”

Pratt Fashion Chair Lisa Z. Morgan closed the evening’s remarks thanking the honoree, “Nicholas, all that you have created is such a heartening example of what fashion design can be, what clothing can do, and the multitude of ways that identity, style, and music create place. Your core values of craft, community, and culture so aligns with our mission here at Pratt Fashion, and we are delighted to be able to honor you this evening.”

Continued Morgan, “As the chair of fashion design, it is an honor and a thrill to be standing here this evening on the cusp of our 2025 seniors’ fashion show. It’s also my first fashion show here at Pratt. Thirty seniors are showing their thesis collections here. And 33 seniors have their work on exhibition now at the Design Show, which opened at the Brooklyn campus last night. I encourage you to visit the work of the students there, as you can view in proximity, the processes behind the outcomes, and get close to the stitches, the ideas, and the proposals materialized through fabric. The Design Show and the Fashion Show are sister shows, and in dialogue amplify the different modalities of fashion and fashion presentation as the profoundly powerful tool of cultural communication we know it to be.”

“There are always themes that emerge across each cohort. This year, our seniors are shaping experiences that offer healing in a multitude of ways, from the personal, to the social, and the political, or else the work proposes a reprieve, summons a roar, or laughs in the face of limitations and restrictions. Laughter and seeking out joy are powerful forms of resistance—and we need these forms of resistance now more than ever.”

Following opening remarks, Pratt presented its 124th annual runway show, showcasing the next names in fashion to an audience of over 400 guests, with students each presenting collections composed of five to seven complete looks, including accessories and footwear. The designers who debuted their collections included, in presenting order: Haeone Son, Ava Truckenbrod, Griselda Peña Candelario, Bora Erden, Georgia James, Yalei Fang, Ruoshui Wang, Grace-Marie Cooney, Bel Davies, Andy Yi, Yunru Huang, Xin Gu, Isabella Pedrero, Aries Huilin Zeng, Christen Lee, Kylei Casmire, Phoebe Mang, hiosuthe, Lillian Krueger, Xinjun Lu, Jiahe Heidi Du, Zhengyu Zhou, Joy Qiu, Jude Mikulencak,Noah Luca Weisberg, Henry Hitchcock, Lily Lonigan, Amelia Yetter, Angie Yutong Zhou, and Kalen Whitehead. Today, Pratt Fashion announced that Haeone Son won the coveted Christopher Hunte “On Point” Award, a $10,000 prize awarded to one graduating designer.