Course summary

The perfect fit: designers with marketing acumen and communication flair. This dynamic 3-year course combines creative and technical fashion design skills with an in-depth knowledge of marketing, communications, and business for the fashion industry, providing participants with both design and production skills, and relevant market information. Step into the fashion industry from both a creative and business perspective. Starting from essential and conceptual hand drawing techniques, participants begin to develop fashion designs and learn how to further advance their own design ideas from creative research. They are shown how to investigate hot issues in today’s apparel and fashion retail environments, including sustainability and environmental issues, and are introduced to existing and emerging technologies that inform fashion design. From an analysis of clothing manufacture through deconstruction, participants study the language of couture composition and ready to wear, progressing through various stages of the design process from the proposal of a fashion illustration, pattern making and construction, right through to the finished garment. While designing fashion collections and creating garments, participants are introduced to the main principals of marketing and understand the global luxury consumer, in order to recognise and create specific communication strategies for the fashion market. They will learn how to identify and define their own individual collections, and further develop them by considering aspects of range planning, pricing, product development, and the organisation of manufacturing processes. By applying these skills to their own collection planning, participants learn how to manage various aspects of production within the broader fashion supply chain. Finally through the creation of business strategies linked to the development of their own design work, presented through a professional portfolio, participants are able to produce business plans to support the entrepreneurial flair of a collection proposal. This programme gives participants a breadth of skills and knowledge in fashion design and marketing, in preparation for a career in the global fashion, luxury and creative industries. With an extra vision and aptitude in communication and fashion marketing, participants have additional versatile skills that can be adapted to any career in the vast world of fashion and luxury. This course is part of the fashion design study pathways. With fashion design as the core subject, participants specialise in the chosen area of interest, positioning themselves as an industry expert with a specific and highly sought after professional profile.