Design (Fashion) (Taught)

MA Design (Fashion) is an opportunity to reimagine the status quo of fashion through research-led, practical exploration of materials, processes and technologies, developing new strategies for the industry. Build a fashion project through systems-thinking, circular production protocols and new material applications, from concept to prototype to product or service.

MA Design (Fashion) is an opportunity to reimagine the status quo of fashion and to use a research-led, practical exploration of materials, processes and technologies to propose new strategies for the industry.

Designed to foster both design entrepreneurs and creative practitioners, the course encourages you to build upon your existing knowledge or fashion experience to develop a fashion project realised through new material applications, circular production protocols and systems-thinking in a research-based, studio-centred enquiry.

At a glance

• Award: MA Design (Fashion)

• Approach: research-led, practical exploration of materials, processes and technologies

• Project focus: new material applications, circular production protocols and systems-thinking

• Professional dimension: external briefs supporting an iterative evolution from concept to prototype to product or service

• Facilities access: Materials Lab, Biomaterials Lab, Sew Lab, CAD Lab and Fab Lab South West

Research-led practice to propose new strategies

This course will give you the opportunity to dive deep into current practices and theories in Fashion Design that are transforming the nature of this rapidly changing sector, through a direct, critical interrogation of its standards and hands-on research.

Your project, materials and systems-thinking

You’ll build upon your existing knowledge or fashion experience to develop a fashion project realised through:

• New material applications

• Circular production protocols

• Systems-thinking in a research-based, studio-centred enquiry

Your fashion research and creative development will happen together, using your existing practice or industry experience as the foundation for guided experiments to deconstruct and reimagine the assumptions embedded within both design education and fashion cultures.

Interdisciplinary study with industry input

You will benefit from embarking on this study journey within a truly interdisciplinary academic context, enriched by ongoing input from industry specialists and institutional partners who will help ground your experiments with real-world challenges and opportunities.

From concept to prototype to product or service

Through external briefs, your ideas and proposals will take on professional dimensions and provide you with a period of focused making through a full iterative evolution:

• Concept

• Prototype

• Product or service

This process supports both your creative agency and the industry networks required to succeed in the field.

Why choose this course?

• Build on your existing knowledge or industry experience to develop a project that interrogates, challenges and focuses on solutions through systems-thinking.

• Work within a multidisciplinary postgraduate community of makers and designers committed to leading necessary changes to current production models, providing opportunities for purposeful innovation and experimentation.

• Access state-of-the-art facilities and resources to develop your work, including our Materials Lab, Biomaterials Lab, Sew Lab, CAD Lab, and Fab Lab South West.

Careers and future opportunities

Career opportunities include: Fashion Designers, Fashion Retailers, Fashion Educators, Researchers, Entrepreneurs, Buyers, Materials Researchers and Wearables Designers.

Course Modules

The comprehensive Masters structure, which is shared across our specialist subjects, enables our postgraduate students to focus on creative strategies and processes through three sequential units which support you in investigating, testing and developing your ideas. The core tuition focuses on training, research methodology, critical thinking, design, practice-led research methods and professional and conceptual frameworks. All of our programmes have access to outstanding workshop facilities in the university.

A unique component of our postgraduate curriculum is a programme of Research Intensives which invites all MA students into small periods of deep learning in areas of creative expertise led by the university’s research-active staff and external specialists. These Research Intensives enrich subject-specific study with adjacent practices, cultural theories, and creative methodologies that will challenge historical assumptions of your subject and inspire innovative, cross-disciplinary approaches, giving you the opportunity to lead your discipline with original insights.

You will be supported in your MA study by a Subject Tutor who is a specialist in your chosen discipline, to provide a consistent touchstone for the critical development and formal progression of your creative or theoretical work. In addition to your Subject Tutor, you will have ongoing tutorials, critiques, and discipline-specific seminars taught by other members of the postgraduate faculty who lead the curriculum units.

By combining learning units with specialist assignments and personal project proposals, you will be able to achieve depth and specialisation within your subject area, while at the same time develop a critical methodology through techniques that can be applied across the commercial, social and public sectors.

All students are asked to submit an initial statement on application to the course. This sets out your ideas for the MA programme you have selected. Creative practice is about change and development, and this statement will form the starting point for a dialogue about your work and your study journey.