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Fashion BA Honours

Learn to create designs for the textile and fashion industries, with a focus on collaboration and sustainability using digital and traditional technologies
Code
W2B1
Start
September 2024
Duration
3 years full-time
6 years part-time
Attendance
Full-time or part-time
Fees
£9,250 (UK)*
£16,600 (INT)*
Course leader
Michelle Wild

Working with our talented tutors, you will experience new ways to approach both hand drawn and digital techniques. The full Adobe suite is free to all students on and off campus on this course.

Why choose Fashion BA Honours at Middlesex?

This is a flexible degree with a strong focus on sustainability. You will collaborate and create using digital and traditional technologies to discover your unique voice as a fashion and textile creative.

Prepare yourself for a rewarding job in the fashion industry by learning a broad range of Fashion and Textile design skills, and enhance your employability by specialising in your chosen fashion pathway.

You'll learn and develop design skills for the Textiles and Fashion industries, enhancing employment opportunities on graduation.

You'll have access to an incredible range of traditional and digital textile equipment and specialist spaces as well as work placement opportunities. In your second year, you'll be able to undertake a work placement in the fashion industry, and you'll be able to take advantage of further opportunities to take a one-year work placement module.

Our department is based around a collaborative learning environment, so you'll be able to work together with Fashion Communication and Styling and Fashion Marketing students on projects.

Middlesex University | New Designers

What you will gain

By joining us on this course, you'll have the opportunity to:

  • Work with specialist fashion and textile 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
  • Consider a range of responsible, collaborative design solutions to make the fashion and textiles industries more sustainable and inclusive

Further benefits include:

  • Opportunities to 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

3 great reasons to pick this course

  • Student satisfaction
    92% of students were positive about the quality of learning resources and facilities on their course (National Student Survey 2023)
  • Work placement working with designers
    as they prepare for London Fashion Week. In the past, students have worked with fashion giants like Burberry, Erdem, Molly Goddard and Peter Pillotto
  • World-class facilities and equipment
    across both fashion and textiles including knit, weave, print, industrial sewing machinery, photographic studios, 3D workshops, jewellery and ceramics

What you will learn

Our Fashion BA is designed to:

  • Equip you with industry-relevant skills and knowledge whilst fostering your agility to operate with integrity and a strong sense of personal identity within the global fashion community
  • Teach you to think creatively and independently
  • Teach you 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.

Keep informed

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You'll learn the design and technical skills needed for careers in the textile and fashion industries, including research, pattern cutting, garment construction, print, knit, weave and surface embellishment, technical drawing, illustration and CAD.

You'll also learn to look critically at the global fashion industry and identify areas for development around diversity and inclusion in response to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production.

Modules

  • 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.

To find out more about this highly regarded course, please download the Fashion BA Honours specification specification (PDF).

We review our courses regularly to improve your experience and graduate prospects so modules may be subject to change.

  1. Teaching and independent learning
  2. Coursework and assessment

Facilities

The Sheppard Library

Our library is open 24 hours a day during the term and includes:

  • Over 1,000 study areas with rooms for group study and over 600 computer spaces
  • 350,000 books and e-books and more than 24,000 online journals
  • Free laptop loans, Wi-Fi and printing.

Student support

We offer lots of support to help you while you're studying including financial advice, wellbeing, mental health and disability support.

Additional needs

We'll support you if you have additional needs such as sensory impairment or dyslexia. And if you want to find out whether Middlesex is the right place for you before you apply, get in touch with our Disability and Dyslexia team.

Wellness

Our specialist teams will support your mental health. We have free individual counselling sessions, workshops, support groups and useful guides.

Work while you study

Our Middlesex Unitemps branch will help you find work that fits around uni and your other commitments. We have hundreds of student jobs on campus that pay the London Living Wage and above. Visit the Middlesex Unitemps page.

Financial support

You can apply for scholarships and bursaries and our MDX Student Starter Kit to help with up to £1,000 of goods, including a new laptop or iPad.

We have also reduced the costs of studying with free laptop loans, free learning resources and discounts to save money on everyday things. Check out our guide to student life on a budget.

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 designed to provide an authentic practice-based approach to working in the textiles and fashion industries. This course emphasises the importance of industry connections and collaborations. Our industry contacts include renowned names such as The FACE Magazine, Buffalo Magazine, DUST magazine, British Fashion Council, and the Student Fabric Initiative.

Work placements

Fashion students have done placements with: Dazed and Confused, Richard Quinn, Show Studio, Beauty Papers, Gareth Pugh, Jenny Packham, and Scandinavian Vogue.

Placements and internships can greatly improve your future job prospects after you graduate. They usually boost your confidence and academic results by giving you the opportunity to practice what have learned in a professional setting.

Our specialist employability service will also help you find placement opportunities.

  1. UK entry
  2. International entry
  3. Interview and portfolio
  4. How to apply

The fees below are for the 2024/25 academic year:

UK students1

Full-time: £9,250

Part-time: £77 per taught credit

International students2

Full-time students: £16,600

Part-time students: £138 per taught credit

Additional costs

The following study tools are included in your fees:

  • Free laptop loans for up to 24 hours
  • Free access to the resources and learning materials
  • Free access to everything on your reading list
  • Free specialist software for your course
  • Free printing for academic paperwork
  • Free online training with LinkedIn Learning.

Scholarships and bursaries

To help make uni affordable, we do everything we can to support you including our:

  • MDX Excellence Scholarship offers grants of up to £2,000 per year for UK students
  • Regional or International Merit Awards which reward International students with up to £2,000 towards course fees
  • Our MDX Student Starter Kit to help with up to £1,000 of goods, including a new laptop or iPad.

Find out more about undergraduate funding and all of our scholarships and bursaries.

Fees disclaimers

1. UK fees: The university reserves the right to increase undergraduate tuition fees in line with changes to legislation, regulation and any government guidance or decisions. The tuition fees for part-time UK study are subject to annual review and we reserve the right to increase the fees each academic year by no more than the level of inflation.

2. International fees: Tuition fees are subject to annual review and we reserve the right to increase the fees each academic year by no more than the level of inflation.

Any annual increase in tuition fees as provided for above will be notified to students at the earliest opportunity in advance of the academic year to which any applicable inflationary rise may apply.

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 2024

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

Code: 135W220

Fashion Communication and Styling BA Honours

Start: September 2024, September 2025

Duration: 3 years full-time

Code: WF30

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