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Fashion BA Honours

Learn about the course below
Clearing is now open!
This course is available through Clearing

Apply now:

Code
W2B1
Start
September 2023
September 2024
Duration
3 years full-time
6 years part-time
Attendance
Full-time or part-time
Fees
September 2023: £9,250 (UK)*
£15,100 (INT)*

September 2024: £9,250 (UK)*
£16,600 (INT)*
Course leader
Michelle Wild

This course is now available in Clearing.
To find out the latest entry requirements, give us a call 0208 411 6565 or Live chat.

Study design for the textiles and fashion industry with a focus on collaboration and sustainability utilising digital and traditional technologies.

  • Discover your unique voice as a fashion and textiles creative.
  • Prepare yourself for a rewarding job in the fashion industry by learning a broad range of Fashion and Textile design skills.
  • Enhance your employability by specialising in your chosen fashion pathway.

What does our degree do?

  • Equip graduates with industry-relevant skills and knowledge whilst fostering their agility to operate with integrity and a strong sense of personal identity within the global fashion community.
  • Teach students to think creatively and independently.
  • Teach students to work collaboratively.
  • Be responsive to the evolving needs of the fashion industries to work towards UN SDG 12 (Target 12. 5 ‘By 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse’).
  • Celebrate the differences between digital and traditional technologies and their relative merits and uses in context.

Why study Fashion BA at Middlesex University?

  • Students will learn and develop design skills for the Textiles and Fashion industries, enhancing employment opportunities on graduation.
  • Incredible range of traditional and digital textiles equipment and specialist spaces.
  • Work placement opportunities – each 2nd year Fashion student undertakes a work placement in the fashion industry and has the opportunity to take a 1-year work placement module.
  • A collaborative learning environment, working with Fashion Communication and Styling and Fashion Marketing students on projects.

Course highlights

  • Explore all areas of textile and fashion design before specialising.
  • Established connections with the fashion industry.
  • One of the best equipped fashion courses in London.
  • Projects and competitions set by industry contacts.

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What will you study on Fashion BA?

  • Students will learn the Design and technical skills needed for careers in the Textile and Fashion industry: Research, pattern cutting, garment construction, print, knit, weave and surface embellishment, technical drawing, illustration and CAD.
  • Students will learn to look critically at the global fashion industry and identify areas development around diversity and inclusion in response to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 12 Responsible Consumption and Production.

What skills will you gain?

  • Working with specialist fashion and textiles design and making methodologies.
  • Identify personal areas of strength and areas for growth to evolve the unique voices needed to change the future of fashion.
  • Learn the skills to create textiles and garments to a high professional standard of finish.
  • How to consider a range of responsible, collaborative design solutions to make the fashion and textiles industries more sustainable and inclusive.
  • Year 1

    • Fashion Research Skills (30 Credits)

      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.

    • Form and Silhouette (30 Credits)

      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.

    • Fashion and Textile Exploration (30 Credits)

      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.

    • Fashion History and Social Identity (30 Credits)

      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.

  • Year 2

    • Fashion Internship (30 Credits)

      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.

    • Fashion Technologies (30 Credits)

      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.

    • Responding to Industry (30 Credits)

      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.

    • Fashion Cultures and Social Responsibility (30 Credits)

      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.

  • Optional Sandwich Year

    • Industry Placement Year (120 Credits)

      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.

  • Year 3

    • Research and Development (30 Credits)

      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.

    • Fashion Portfolio (30 Credits)

      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.

    • Visual Cultures Research Project (30 Credits)

      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.

    • Fashion Collection (30 Credits)

      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.

    • Textiles Collection (30 Credits)

      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.

  1. Overview
  2. Teaching and learning
  3. Assessment and feedback
  1. Standard entry requirements
  2. International
  3. How to apply

The fees below refer to students commencing in 2023/24:

UK students

Full-time students: £9,250 (UK)

International students

Full-time students: £15,100 (INT)

The fees below refer to students commencing in 2024/25:

UK students

Full-time students: £9,250 (UK)

International students

Full-time students: £16,600 (INT)

For more information and to answer your frequently asked questions, please visit our postgraduate funding page.

Loans and Bursaries

UK students can apply for a tuition fee loan which covers your fees and is only repayable after your graduate. In addition, UK students may be eligible for additional grants and loans including those from:

The Department for Education - on the Department for Education website you will find a full list of designated ITT subjects and funding offers

How can Fashion BA support your career?

Graduates from the two named exit awards BA (Hons) Fashion (Design Technologies) and BA (Hons) Fashion (Textiles and Design) will be well placed to enter the fashion and textiles industries in the UK and globally.

Graduates have gone on to study for a Master's Degree at Westminster, The Royal College of Art and Central St Martins as well as working with Tom Ford, Givenchy, Acne studios, ASOS and Levi’s. Recent graduates have won The British Fashion Council X British Library competition 2022/23 and Show Studio’s Class of 2020.

Graduates will be employable in a range of different roles including:

  • Freelance textiles designer (print, weave, knit)
  • Freelance Fashion Designer
  • Design room assistant
  • Garment technician
  • Production assistant
  • Sustainability advisor
  • Sustainable fabric developer.
  • Fashion designer in both high-street and designer labels
  • Own label start-ups

Active practice-based learning

  • This new course is delivered to reflect an authentic practice-based approach to working in the textiles and fashion industries.
  • Staff Links with industry.
  • Fashion industry collaborations include: The FACE Magazine, Buffalo Magazine, DUST magazine, British Fashion Council, Student Fabric Initiative.
  • Fashion students have done placements with: Dazed and Confused, Richard Quinn, Show Studio, Beauty Papers, Gareth Pugh, Jenny Packham, and Scandinavian Vogue.

Jodie Ruffle
Year 3 Lead

Jodie studied MA Fashion at Middlesex University, beginning her career with an internship at Jonathan Saunders before going on to work at Alexander McQueen and creating costumes for the National Youth Ballet, among many other career highlights.

Hazel Robinson
Year 3 Tutor

Hazel is a Middlesex BA Fashion alum who has worked for fashion houses such as Loewe, Mulberry and Giles and was one half of iconic British womenswear label House of Jazz, stylist Katie Grand was their consultant.

Wakako Kishimoto
Lecturer in Fashion Print

Wakako, our Print Tutor, is one half of the world-renowned print duo Eley Kishimoto, who have produced print designs for Louis Vuitton, Alexander McQueen, Marc Jacobs, Alber Elbaz and Jil Sander to name a few, as well as collaborations with BMW, Eastpack and Macbook Accessories. Eley Kishimoto’s work has spanned fashion and interiors as well as art installation, and their infamous ‘flash print’ has featured on London crossroads and architecture throughout the past decade.

Teodora Mitrovska
Graduate Academic Assistant

Teodora, our Graduate Academic Assistant, graduated from Middlesex in 2018 and after showing her collection during the MDX Graduate Fashion Show at the Barbican, she received press from Hunger Magazine, Vogue CZ, FGUK Magazine and L’Officiel. She then went on to show a collection of menswear at Fashion Weekend Skopje, as well as presenting a full collection at Lisbon Fashion Week.

As a fashion directorate we like to hold events regularly in our purpose-built atrium in the Grove Building. These events have had a wonderful contribution from our Visting Associate Professors Orsola de Castro (Founder of Fashion Revolution) and Andrew Ibi (Founder of Fashion Academics Creating Equality) and teaching colleagues from Toronto Metropolitan University. In February 2023 the Fashion Directorate held an event titled: Fashion Detour this was designed around one central question “What does Fashion look like when you are included?”

Reuben Year 1 said “An unconditional space for everybody”

Farah Year 1 said “Bringing my culture and my people, I guess into it. There isn’t a lot of diversity when I look at Fashion and the Fashion industry, me included is bringing that with me."

Fashion Model at Middlesex University event

Fashion show held on Middlesex University campus


We’ll carefully manage any future changes to courses, or the support and other services available to you, if these are necessary because of things like changes to government health and safety advice, or any changes to the law.

Any decisions will be taken in line with both external advice and the University’s Regulations which include information on this.

Our priority will always be to maintain academic standards and quality so that your learning outcomes are not affected by any adjustments that we may have to make.

At all times we’ll aim to keep you well informed of how we may need to respond to changing circumstances, and about support that we’ll provide to you.

Other courses

Fashion Marketing BA Honours

Start: September 2023
September 2024

Duration: 3 years full-time, 6 years part-time

Code: 135W220

Fashion Communication and Styling BA Honours

Start: September 2023

Duration: 3 years full-time

Code: WF30

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