Fashion Design [with Foundation Year]

Create your own fashion designs from day one and launch your career with a professional portfolio and stand-out final collection.

Forge an identity as a designer, specialising in menswear or womenswear, and put your new knowledge and skills into practice on live industry projects.

You’ll create your own fashion designs and engage with all aspects of the design process, including drawing, traditional and experimental pattern cutting, draping, textiles and digital media.

You’ll also learn about 3D digital fashion design and innovation, contemporary fashion styling and promotion, art direction, and circular fashion and sustainability.

Join a course that scored 90% for ‘Assessment and feedback’ and ‘Learning resources’ in the National Student Survey 2024.

Get hands-on and create a professional portfolio throughout your course.

Work alongside dedicated technicians who’ll show you how to use latest tech or find that design solution.

Launch your career with a final collection at our Graduate Showcase and Graduate Fashion Week.

Get work experience, internships and placements – including an optional placement year – and work on live briefs.

Join a course whose alumni have established their own labels, or worked for well-known fashion houses and brands, and high-profile clients.

Careers

Our BA (Hons) Fashion Design degree will support you to gain a range of industry experience and insight so you can pursue roles suited to your skills, talents and aspirations.

As well as getting career-ready with your own personal portfolio, you'll be able to engage with contemporary fashion issues such as sustainability and gender neutrality.

Graduation doesn’t need to be the end of your time with us. You might decide to stay at ARU and study for a Masters. Take advantage of our Alumni Scholarship and get 20% off your fees.

Our BA (Hons) Fashion Design degree will help you develop your individual style as a designer, with a portfolio ready to present to fashion houses. Or you might pursue other roles, such as styling, buying, pattern cutting and trend forecasting.

Teaching

You’ll start by getting to grips with the basics: pattern-cutting and construction, drawing, fashion illustration and digital image-making.

As well as building upon these skills and developing your trademark style and portfolio throughout the rest of the course, you’ll explore fashion promoting and marketing, learn about responsibility and sustainability in fashion, and gain valuable experience, so you can graduate with a full understanding of the industry.

You’ll round off your degree with a specialist Major Project, bringing together everything you’ve learned while enhancing your employability and enterprise skills

Facilities

All our Fashion Design students benefit from a full range of facilities including dedicated fashion workshops and studios; specialist machines including Jersey cover sewing machine; Bias binder machine; overlocker machines; buttonhole and bar tack machines; walking foot machine for heavy duty fabrics including leather; heat presses for textile work; Saori looms; knitting machines and ribber; embroidery machines with Wilcom software; seam-sealing machine; long arm quilter; Monti Antonio heat press; Gerber system; Mac and PC suites with the latest industry-standard software; photography and media facilities and studios; professional equipment loans.

*=optional.

Year 1 core modules: Foundation Year in Art and Design.

Year 2: Cut, Form and Construction; Design: Visual and Material Practice; Visual Communication and Portfolio; Sustainable Design and Innovation Practice; Into ARU.

Year 3: Design and Professional Practice; Fashion Communication, Promotion and Events; Ruskin Module; Critical Issues and Debates; 3D Digital Fashion and Innovation; Contemporary Cut and Realisation.

Year 4: Fashion Concept: Pre-Collection; Final Collection and Professional Portfolio; Research Project*; Working in the Creative Industries*.

You will show your progress towards your final portfolio with a combination of written and practical work, depending on the module, with regular feedback from our lecturers.