Q+A with Caleb Callahan
Pratt Institute BFA 2026
Cork, Kerala
In Next Gen / No Kill, we spotlight standout fashion graduates whose work opens up new conversations and possibilities. From New York’s top programs and beyond, these are the designers shaping a future of fashion defined by intelligence, creativity, and intention.
What is the inspiration or concept behind your collection?
Irish and Indian anticolonialism: this collection combines these cultures’ craft traditions with their revolutionary uniforms, which range from found clothing to standard issue fatigues. This is represented in the silhouettes, color palette, and surfaces which are layered and collaged. Techniques like hand-embroidery, digital printing, reweaving, and kantha quilting are used to connect these two cultures. While craft and uniforms seem opposite, looking back into this anti-colonial history suggests the two can be combined into a modern revolutionary uniform.
What’s one material or technique you’re currently obsessed with?
A technique I call “reweaving” where I take woven textiles, cut them into 2 inch strips, fold them into 1/2 inch strips, and weave them into a new textile.
What does fashion mean to you today?
Fashion is a complicated system of profit/exploitation and beautiful individual and communal expression. Today, as fashion communication has moved to the algorithmic internet sphere, these opposing poles are further exaggerated.
I think the fashion of today is in a unique place in history, where it is easier to find fashion communities than it ever has been, but it is also easier to rampantly overproduce than it ever has been.
What’s one thing you wish the fashion industry would leave behind—and one thing it should embrace?
The industry is making too many clothes! Production calendars should shift away from financial goals that lead to overproduction.
In some ways, the bar for entry for fashion is getting lower and lower. There are encyclopedias of YouTube tutorials and other online resources to get started, which will hopefully lead to an even more diverse and democratized system of fashion design.
Who or what has shaped your design values most?
Virgil Abloh, who paid equal attention to how clothes are designed and how clothes are culturally worn.
If you could design for anyone in the world, who would it be—and why?
Wim Wenders – Notebook on Cities and Clothes is evidence of a mind that can synthesize film, fashion, writing, and geography into one artwork.
Three things keeping you sane right now
Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen
POMPEII // UTILITY by MIKE, Earl Sweatshirt & Surf Gang
Very long walks
One word to describe your design approach: Political
Where can we find you online?
calebcallahan.com or @cccaalleebbb
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