Fashion BA Honours

This module aims to facilitate a grounding in the fundamentals of fashion concept creation, mixed media working, the ethos of responsible design, introductory pattern cutting skills and understanding of textiles. Students will explore primary and secondary resources to underpin the full design process from concept to 3D realisation. The module runs across the first term introducing students to core research skills, fashion and textiles design and development skills.

This module aims to encourage students to develop an awareness of their own role as a designer within the broader fashion and textiles industry contexts, promoting an interdisciplinary experience, the cross fertilisation of practice/s and design presentation skills.

The module provides opportunities for the development of technical skills in pattern cutting and garment construction that will enable students to translate their design ideas into three-dimensional garments towards the completion of a design brief.

The introductory nature of module FSH1903 aims to encourage students to challenge their creative process, take risks and experiment within a safe and supportive environment.

Through a series of workshops in small group rotations, this module promotes the confidence to explore, create and innovate whilst working responsibly. Through exposure to a range of techniques in surface and constructed textiles and computer aided design (CAD), the module encourages an understanding of the symbiotic nature of fashion and textiles. Further opportunities are provided for students to explore a range of communication tools and presentation techniques – exploring 2D, 3D, analogue and digital formats. Module FSH1903 runs throughout the whole of year 1 introducing specialist fashion and textile design skills. Upon completion, students will have the knowledge and experience to identify areas of specialism for further development.

This year-long module aims to introduce students to different ways of looking at and thinking about fashion, introducing ,key themes, narratives and concepts, and considering their historical and theoretical underpinnings. The module draws connections between fashions from the past and the present to encourage students to understand the rich cultural and social meanings of clothing and adornment in global traditions. This approach teaches a broad range of visual and material research methodologies that encourage students to be resourceful and explore different objects, archives, and historical collections, making context the center of students’ creative practice.

This module aims to empower students to acquire new competencies that will enable them to assume significant responsibility within organisations. Through a period of professional internship, students will experience and gain an understanding of the qualities and transferrable skills necessary for employment in the fashion and textiles industries. Identifying an appropriate career specialisation in the fashion and textiles industries is a process which requires the exercise of personal responsibility and decision-making. Through identifying sources of employment opportunities, learning how to navigate job specification and making connections with potential employers, collaborators and networks, this module provides students with lifelong skills for employability and self-employment.

This module aims to introduce higher level challenges by exploring selected analogue and digital specialisms to develop existing skills and acquire new competencies in the areas of fashion technologies. Students are encouraged to combine personal identity and research with the investigation of traditional design techniques and advancements in design technology to exercise personal responsibility and decision making in a personally charted field of creative fashion and textiles design.

This module builds on knowledge, values, preferences, and skills acquired in year 1 and encourages students to celebrate a sophisticated and nuanced differentiation between traditional and digital methods, to give the students professional confidence in multiple tools and systems for creating and making fashion and textiles and their relative merits and uses in context.

This module aims to reflect the fast pace of the fashion and textiles industries and further develop autonomy and professional confidence gained through the internship module to design and develop innovative fashion and textile products targeted to a clearly identified market segment. This creative process emphasises the ability to apply accumulated design knowledge, skills, and production principles in an industry context.

Furthermore, this module advances student's exposure to new technologies in the fashion industry and opens opportunities for exploring virtual fashion and textiles design, celebrating a sophisticated and nuanced differentiation between traditional and digital methods. This approach aims to give students professional confidence in multiple tools and systems for creating and making fashion and textiles and understanding their relative merits and uses in context. Via industry-focused briefs and/or competitions students are encouraged to consider how their personal design practice demonstrates an awareness of professional standards and client specific expectations. Advanced learning and technical workshops in fashion design and textile design continue to expand and establish students’ design aspirations.

This module aims to adopt a decolonial perspective to explore and develop how contemporary debates, themes and concepts influence the material, visual, aural and oral cultures of fashion, challenging dominant historical narratives and unpicking fashion’s mythologies from a global perspective. The module builds upon the core academic research and communication skills introduced in Level 4 within the Fashion History and Social Identity module. Lectures, seminars, and interactive sessions develop students’ specialist knowledge and understanding of critical concepts and issues in contemporary fashion, related to the production, consumption, and mediation of fashion, as a global aspect of both culture and industry.

The module develops students’ own independent research interests in contemporary fashion cultures and how they relate to industry and the larger society to develop students’ critical awareness of the fashion industry and help students position their creative work in an ethically informed, responsible, and culturally competent manner.

This optional module allows students to undertake a year-long internship in the field of fashion industry. Students can utilise an employment experience to provide an insight into the work methods and operation of a fashion business or freelance role in a field of fashion design, textiles or communication. This will enable the skills and knowledge acquired during Levels 4 and 5 to be applied and related to personal and professional practice. A year-long placement will engender an understanding of the principles of reflective practice and their application in a professional context.

This module is delivered in the first term of final year of study and provides students with the opportunity to work to their own self-directed briefs (with opportunities to collaborate with peers focussing on other specialisms). Aiming to consolidate all previous learning, tis module requires students to take creative risks, seek new knowledge, and explore and articulate individual interests, identity, and aesthetics. Students are expected to undertake extensive research and develop 2D and 3D sampling, and pre-collection makes providing a robust creative grounding for term two.

This module runs throughout year 3 integrating and showcasing all previous learning. Students produce a visual record of their individual fashion outputs, creating a bespoke portfolio of work appropriate for positions within the design and creative industries.

This project will allow students to engage with the identification, organisation, and development of a substantial, in-depth, self-directed research project (Dissertation) with a clear and sustained critical argument. We encourage the pursuit of a research topic related to issues explored in students’ own practice in any area of fashion visual cultures.  They will further develop critical awareness and self-reflection of historical and/or contemporary contexts of the discipline and research topic, building on primary and secondary research skills embedded at levels 4 and 5, and developing their ability to identify, analyse and critically evaluate appropriate sources and research methods.

This module aims to nurture a systematic understanding of key aspects of fashion textiles and design and encourages the acquisition of detailed knowledge in specialist textiles disciplines. It is informed by cutting edge developments in materiality, haptic and tactile research methods, and responsible collaborative practice. The module fosters curiosity, innovation, independence, resilience, confidence, and development of student’s own creative identity as independent design practitioners. It builds on all previous learning to refine advanced scholarship and creative practice in fashion and textiles design. Creative outcomes are negotiated by the student to position themselves professionally in their intended career discipline and showcase accurately established techniques of analysis and creative enquiry. This module encourages students to manage their own learning, exercising initiative to identify their intended audience and develop a working practice for industry.

This module aims to prepare students for the professional, creative, and social expectations of working in the global fashion industry as a designer specialised in the creation of innovative 3D and 4D forms to clothe the body and drive debate about style and social identity. The module empowers students to initiate innovative fashion concepts and deploy accurately established techniques of analysis and enquiry in advanced pattern cutting, draping, digital fashion design and production.

This module offers students the opportunity to work to a negotiated brief and explore complex problem solving to produce innovative and original outcomes. The focus is on creative fashion responses to personal research and concepts through iterative design approaches. Students shape and explore their own design identity through the production and showcasing of a collection, which may be realised in material, virtual or hybrid forms, focused on driving the future of the fashion industry.