BA (Hons) in Fashion Design

Fashion Design: Exploring Materials And Methods

This unit will introduce you to essential practices in Fashion Design and the materials and methods involved in garment production and design development for Fashion. You will learn how to translate your ideas into real outcomes through design development, pattern cutting, and sewing, as a way of communicating creative concepts, this will include a variety of production methods, translating design ideas from 2-D to 3-D, and developing your understanding of industrial garment production. You will explore and experiment with materials and textiles to understand applications and contexts. This unit has a focus on the ethical and environmental questions for the contemporary fashion designer and this awareness is embedded in the materials and methods being explored.
You will maintain a Research Portfolio, throughout the course, to enable you to connect your understanding of Materials and Methods to your design practice, contextual and practical work, broadening and deepening your understanding of Fashion Design. This synthesis between research and practice will assist your learning and ability to independently explore project briefs.

Context And Ideas

This unit introduces Context and Ideas in Art and Design, exploring visual culture, ideologies, and interpretations of historic and contemporary practice. You will consider research methods to help you analyze art and design theory and practice. Lectures and seminars will introduce key ideas in art and design, and their effects on culture and society, allowing you to reflect on how they impact and influence your studio practice. You will develop your academic study skills.

Introducing Studio Practice

This unit introduces you to Art and Design study in a higher education environment. It will introduce you to the learning resources available to you and the types of learning in which you will engage. An important aspect of the unit is to lay the foundation for your approach to study.

This will include helping you to develop as an independent learner with the self-confidence to reflect upon personal performance and identify areas for action.

There will be a strong relationship between the learning involved in this unit and its application to other units in the art and design courses.

Throughout this unit, you will experience cross-discipline learning and development, collaborative working, as well as discipline-specific skills and experience.

Thinking Through Making

This unit introduces you to practical working methods in Art and Design - where you will be encouraged to develop a personal understanding of your discipline through testing, experimenting, and making.

The unit will enhance your ability to communicate and ‘play’ in a range of formats the capacity to be creative and to develop an aesthetic sensibility through engagement with technology, processes, and ideas.

Using a practice-based approach you will be encouraged to take creative risks, allowing you to develop practice that enriches your work, giving you the freedom to explore and discover creative processes that are both discipline and non-discipline specific.

You will learn how to test and translate your ideas using a range of media that articulate and communicate visual ideas and develop an understanding of your practice.

Collaborative Enterprise

This unit allows you to apply your acquired knowledge and expertise in your discipline, to a collaborative interdisciplinary project.

The work and learning of this unit are seen as an important link between your academic work and the professional world.

You will negotiate your learning with your supervising tutor who will take account of your agreed role within group scenarios. The unit tests your abilities to work both independently and collaboratively in the wider professional community.

Fashion Design: Developing Materials And Methods

This unit aims to provide an opportunity to research, test, experiment, explore, and learn to manage creative risk.
You will establish a focused and effective fashion design studio practice using creative production methods. You will investigate subject-specific skills, methods, and material processes for fashion design. You will select and develop technical skills and integrate working methods to support investigation and problem-solving. This unit consolidates and develops practical and critical skills involved in fashion design introduced in level 4.

Developing Professional Practice

This unit consolidates your development and understanding of subject-specific materials and methods and encourages you to consider their application to professional practice.

You will take into account commercial, cultural, and social contexts in response to projects and visual inquiry, and develop the confidence to take creative risks in your practice.

There is an increasing emphasis on your portfolio and exhibition practice, to further encourage independence and professionalism in the presentation of your work.

Context And Meaning

This unit builds upon knowledge gained at level 4, to place theory and practice into global contexts. You will examine a range of critical texts and practices related to art, design, and visual culture.

You will further develop your research and analytical skills so that you can engage with the contexts and meanings that underpin your practice, and inform the way you critically evaluate the development of your creative work.

Creative Futures

At level 6, you will be preparing yourself for a professional creative role. This unit provides an environment in which you will prepare for a professional life after your degree, helping you to develop creative futures that focus on your ambitions and interests. This may include preparation for becoming a freelance artist, designer, or maker; working independently, in a co-operative, agency, or enterprise; teaching, or pursuing further study.

The unit will encourage you to participate in live projects, competition briefs, or collaborative teamwork.

As part of professional practice, you will further develop your ability to present yourself and your professional portfolio. You will learn how to create relevant marketing and self-promotional material and engage with online media to promote your professional identity, concepts, and products.

Critical And Creative Contexts

This unit offers you the opportunity to deepen your insight into contemporary art and design practices, issues, and critical debates. Programs of tutorial support and self-determined study will help you to develop a context, in which you can place your emerging practical work and underpin your major project with a critical and contextual rationale.

The unit will support you in developing and implementing research strategies in the context of your Final Major Project – your investigations and growing knowledge will further inform your final project.

Final Major Project: Fashion Design

This unit will allow you to pursue your creative interests and artistic concerns in the production of a fashion collection for public display.

The unit allows you to demonstrate your acquired skills and abilities through individual research and practice. The production of a self-initiated research-based project will enhance your personal development as a designer.

You will explore the relationship between practice and theory about Fashion and your Final Major Project.

English Language Foundation

This unit focuses on your ability to understand and use the English language accurately when you read, speak, listen, and write. We will concentrate on the English you need for undergraduate-level study in your chosen subject area, covering grammar, subject area vocabulary, and the four language skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

A key element of the unit is the grammar of the language, particularly the verb tense system in English because your ability to use the verb tense system accurately will be extremely important when it comes to writing essays and reports. This unit will focus in particular on the grammar of the language.

We will also focus on reading, listening, and speaking skills in the context of your chosen subject area. Beginning with short texts, we will practice each skill and practice it again, so that gradually you will see, hear, and feel that your command of the language is improving.

A recurring focus of the unit will be your acquisition of 'learner autonomy'. This means your ability to acquire the language yourself, without needing a teacher's help. This is important because from next year you will not have an English teacher to help you. So we will consider and practice strategies to help you gain confidence in your ability to increase your knowledge of and ability to use the language, including, for instance, guessing the meaning of difficult words, deciding which words are important in a text, recognizing differences between formal and informal language, and other strategies, so that as the first semester continues, you begin to feel more confident in your use and experience with the English Language.

Academic Skills Foundation

When you begin your undergraduate level studies, you will be expected to have knowledge of and the ability to use a large range of 'study skills'. You will also be expected to have some knowledge of the subject area you will be studying. This unit deals with both of these aspects of your preparation for undergraduate-level study.

All of the academic skills are practiced in English, so you will use your developing acquisition of the language from the partner unit 'English Language Foundation' to practice and gain mastery of these skills. You will also use your language and study skills as you learn the foundation of your subject area, putting the skills into practice as you learn.

Developing English Language Skills

This unit builds on the progress you made during its partner semester 1 unit 'English Language Foundation' and increases your level from that which you had achieved by the end of semester 1.

We will recycle the tense system in English and other elements of the grammar system, but you will now learn how to use other aspects of the grammar, including the passive voice, as well as linking words and phrases and devices that enable you to write longer sentences but retain grammatical accuracy.

You will notice that we gradually introduce more specialist language that you need in preparation for your degree and we will expect you to use and develop the skills that you gained in the previous units so that you can work more independently.

Academic Skills Development

This unit builds on the skills learned and practiced in its partner semester 1 unit 'Foundation Academic Skills'. We will add more skills to the list, including summarizing and synthesizing, argumentation, critical thinking, and referencing and citation skills, as well as several others, and practice and test them in the same way as with the semester 1 unit.

We will also investigate the research skill and you will learn how to prepare a research proposal and conduct a literature review, and how to plan a research project, learning about the research tools available and how they can be used to conduct research in your chosen field.

You will continue to broaden your knowledge of key current issues and theory in your chosen subject area and apply the critical thinking and argumentation skills you acquire in this unit to argue for and against propositions you have studied in the form of both essays and presentations and in seminar situations, ensuring that you are ready to step up to your chosen undergraduate course with a base level of subject area knowledge from which to continue your academic development as you progress to level 4 study.

How will you be assessed?

A range of appropriate assessments will enable you to grow in confidence and demonstrate your acquisition of knowledge and skills. The formative and summative assessment methods used across the course include Coursework to include examples of Fashion Design research sketchbooks/portfolios professional portfolio research assignments garment manufacture 3-D development essays contextual writing and blogs. Assessments based on individual and group presentations. Portfolio reviews are a key means of assessing but they are also important for collating work for a professional portfolio. This instills the right attitudes towards professional work whereby you can use your portfolio to promote yourself in professional contexts. Essays and reports feature in developing writing skills helping you to express ideas in a variety of ways and styles and to develop academic writing skills that are of particular benefit in producing the final year contextual rationale for your major project. A midpoint Formal Formative Assessment to review all work in progress Key-making skills are embedded in the teaching and learning of the course and will be taken into account in all assessments.

The assessments will develop incrementally across the course and allow you to gain skills confidence and knowledge receive feedback and develop thus allowing you to implement this knowledge and feedback into subsequent assessments. At the end of the course, completion of the assessments will demonstrate your ability to analyse current art and design practice - about Fashion Design - and communicate this in both written and visual formats as well as demonstrate a range of transferable skills relevant to your professional employability.

1. Subject Knowledge: Evidence knowledge of the broad critical and contextual dimensions of Fashion Design, the significance of the work of other practitioners, and the major developments in current and emerging media and technologies.
2. Research Skills: Demonstrate proficiency in research and development of ideas and concepts through observation, investigation, inquiry, visualisation, and/or making.
3. Making Skills: Study, experiment, and develop proficiency in the use of materials and textiles, pattern cutting and manufacturing techniques, appropriate digital software and processes, fashion illustration, and technical drawing.
4. Concepts & Ideas: Evidence of ability to generate ideas independently and/or as self-initiated activity and/or in response to set briefs and negotiated projects.
5. Creative Development: Develop ideas through outcomes that confirm an ability to select and use materials, processes, and environments, analyzing and making connections between intention,
   process, outcome, context, and methods of dissemination.
6. Intellectual Property: Demonstrate an understanding of the role and impact of intellectual property and copyright within Fashion Design and its wider context, observing sound and ethical working practices, and professional/legal responsibilities relating to the subject.
7. Contextual Understanding: Consolidate, apply and extend learning in different contexts and situations, both within and beyond the field of art and design, considering issues which arise from the creative
   practitioner's relationship with audiences, clients, markets, environments, users, consumers, and/or participants
8. Ethical Awareness: Demonstrate awareness of contemporary sociopolitical, ethical, and cultural concerns, which might include but not be limited to issues around sustainability, identity, inclusivity, diversity, and environmental responsibility.
9. Professional Behaviour: Exercise self-management skills in managing workloads, collaborative working, interpersonal
   communication, presentation, accommodating change and uncertainty to meeting deadlines

Employability and professional practice skills are integrated into the course and provide you with an awareness of the real-world context of the creative industries in general and fashion design in particular. You will be helped to develop a strategy for obtaining appropriate employment at the end of your course with a work-related learning unit that will especially help you to become more focused on managing your career. You will be helped with the preparation of a professional portfolio including a CV and learn the social-media skills needed to promote yourself in a social-mediated art and design world.

Typical graduate destinations for Fashion Design students include work within the field of contemporary fashion and textile design as a fashion designer fashion stylist textile developer and selector or pattern cutter. Many graduates also choose to work in areas related to design practice such as teaching garment technology and production.

Previous graduates have gone on to work with Alexander McQueen Mary Katranzou Lulu Liu Sopie Webster Amanda Wakeley Zandra Rhodes Love Magazine and Denza International. Some of our graduates have started their own label such as Aaugust who won Young Designer of the Year at Africa Fashion Week London.

Another avenue is further study at Master's level (Level 7) in areas such as advanced design studies accessory design fashion business and promotion.