Block 1 (Weeks 1-15)
Diagnostic and Development Project (40 Credits)
Fashion Practice and Critical Contexts (20 Credits)
Block 2 (Weeks 16-30)
Negotiated Major Project (60 Credits)
Course structure
The information outlined is an indicative structure of the course. Whilst we will aim to deliver the course as described on this page, there may be situations where it is desirable or necessary for the University to make changes in course provision, for example because of regulatory requirements or operational efficiencies, before or after enrolment. If this occurs, we will communicate all major changes to applicants and students who have either applied or enrolled on the course.
Webpage updates
We will update this webpage from time to time with new information as it becomes available. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please contact a member of the course team.
Course Units:
The Diagnostic and Development Project
Creative fashion design relies on a deep, personal understanding of research that should originate from a multitude of sources and inspirations. To become an innovative designer within the industry requires the ability to take this information and respond by taking risks and alternate paths throughout the design process and beginning to understand what may make you different. This practice-based unit aims to observe and challenge your use of both existing and unfamiliar methods of the research, design, and technical processes to help inform your values as a designer. Through the introduction of different approaches to research and design this unit will encourage an experimental and reflective approach to understanding a design brief centred around fashion product.
Fashion Practice and Critical Contexts
The fashion industry is a field of cultural production that circulates highly symbolic objects across many overlapping and interconnected spaces of production and consumption. To work in this field requires a high amount of reflexivity and a tacit understanding of the aesthetic, social and political contexts in which fashion is produced. This unit affords you the opportunity to explore fashion in its cultural and historical contexts and to develop a theoretical underpinning to inform your design practice. You will learn how to apply academic and visual research methods in order to make sense of current issues in fashion practice and how to contextualise them through cultural and critical theory.
Negotiated Major Project
This final unit will consolidate the critical, conceptual and experimental thinking developed within block one. It presents the opportunity for you to devise, explore and realise a personal and in-depth practice-led fashion outcome. You will be expected to propose and critique your intentions for the project and justify any potential innovation within the context of the fashion industry, in relation to both what you produce and how you present it.
The project will be led by continuously developing your sense of aesthetic that critically reflects on your likes and dislikes as a practitioner whilst also providing the opportunity to explore and realise the challenges of your chosen brief. Visual research methods will be explored in relation to your studio practice giving you the ability to present a professional and self-directed project with appropriate fashion related outcomes. Your work will evidence your ability to construct, direct and organise an overall professional outcome. By evaluating and reflecting upon your own learning and skills you may direct this project towards postgraduate progression, entering the industry or considering personal enterprise.
