Fashion Design

The preliminary and intensive Integrated Foundation in Art and Design is designed to develop your ideas, skills and confidence in readiness for progressing to year one of your degree programme.

This year provides you with the opportunity to identify, apply for, and secure professional experience, normally comprising one to three placements over a minimum of nine months. Successful completion of this module will demonstrate your ability to secure and sustain graduate-level employment.

By completing the module, you'll be entitled to the addition of 'with Professional Placement Year' to your degree title.

Before your Professional Placement Year, you'll work to secure your placement, constructing a development plan with your module leader and your placement coordinator from our Careers and Employability team.

On your return to University for your final year, you'll submit your Placement Portfolio, detailing your development on your placement, for assessment.

Fashion is a dynamic and challenging discipline that is an expression of what people feel and think. It is about evolution and change through design, influenced by cultural, social, historical, economic and political change. To this end you’ll cover all aspects of the design process, from research and design development, drawing and illustration, colour and fabric development, historical and cultural studies, as well as the ability to translate ideas from 2D to 3D.

We foster active, experiential learning; encouraging you to become a critically engaged, independent thinker.

Year one
This level covers the core fundamentals of fashion design disciplines including 2D and 3D practice; design, drawing, fashion illustration, CAD, construction, pattern cutting, ideas research and trend research as well as fabric sourcing and development; the relationship between fabric and design. You’ll develop two-dimensional presentation skills investigating ideas through drawing within a sketchbook to inform your three- dimensional work and may use the Fashion Museum as a key resource for research. Tailoring is also covered at this level.

We’ll introduce you to fashion history and context.

Year two
In your second year you’ll be encouraged to develop a more personal design style and to develop ideas through research, design development, and design translation using drape and modelling on the stand. You’ll develop your drawing and fashion illustration skills and learn to communicate your ideas and design process within a fashion portfolio, as well as participate in a live project brief offering the chance to be selected for a paid internship in San Francisco. You’ll also undertake an external brief.

Year three
At this level you’ll develop a more strategic perspective and negotiate a body of work that reflects your personal practice as a designer, drawing together your academic experiences and personal interests to develop a highly professional contemporary fashion collection. You’ll work as a designer in industry working with external companies or collaborating with other disciplines as necessary. As part of professional contexts you’ll enter national design competitions, develop a strong fashion portfolio and self promotional materials, as well as greater knowledge of business and roles within fashion to help you develop an employment strategy.

Students will have a presence at Graduate Fashion Week in London that is attended by industry and press from the UK and overseas, as well as showcasing work in Bath at the Bath School of Design degree show.

At this level you’ll also undertake a written thesis.

Continuous assessment: 84% main study modules, 16% historical and critical studies. There are no written exams.

Tutorials
The most individual form of teaching you’ll receive outside of one-to-one help in the studio.

Lectures
Lecturers may be members of the course academic team or visiting specialists.

Group discussion/seminars
These provide a platform to debate and examine implications, influences and demands of a project as well as issues of interest to ensure that you're well informed. Active participation in an exchange of ideas is important to help you develop articulate and confident attitudes to your work.

Practical demonstrations
A specialist will demonstrate techniques, skills, equipment and a variety of technical procedures that you’ll need to know to successfully complete modules.

Group criticisms
Completed projects are usually evaluated as group criticisms. This gives you the opportunity to analyse and evaluate your work in a group context and learn to explain your ideas coherently. You should learn to evaluate criticism, how to accept it and how to give it.

To find out more about how we teach and how you'll learn, please read our Learning and Teaching Delivery Statement.

As part of your degree, you could study abroad on a placement at one of Bath Spa’s partner universities.

We organise visits to Trade Fairs nationally and internationally as well as visit a manufacturing unit in the UK. Please note that you’ll have to pay for these study visits.

Live projects are incorporated into the course. Previous projects have been set by companies such as Hobbs, Old Navy, Jaeger, Nicole Farhi, Karen Millen and Griffin Menswear.

You’ll be expected to undertake a work placement or internship during the summer vacations, however these aren't assessed and can be undertaken nationally or internationally (finance permitting). Work placements have been undertaken at Erdem, Issa, Adidas, Nicole Farhi, Alexander McQueen, Karen Millen, Griffin, Pentland Group, New Look, Matthew Williamson, Tom Ford, Betty Jackson, Whistles, Stella McCartney, Chloe, Boudicca, Vivienne Westwood, Roland Mouret, Warehouse, Ted Baker, River Island and Twenty8Twelve.

Graduates have been employed at Zara (Spain), Chinti & Parker, Osman, Peter Pilotto, Old Navy (San Francisco), Erdem, Berghaus, Issa, Toast,  Dune, Mulberry, Roland Mouret, Boudicca, Coast, Karen Millen, Giles Deacon, Gieves and Hawkes, Esprit (Cologne), French Connection, Sharon Wauchob (Paris), Joseph, Zara (Spain) and Nicole Farhi. Other graduates have progressed to study Master's degrees or set up their own businesses.

Careers could include:

• In-house designer
• Freelance designer
• Design consultancy
• Creative pattern cutter
• Freelance pattern cutter
• Designing/pattern cutting for manufacturers
• Forecasting
• Styling
• Buying
• Product developer
• Technical designer

You have the opportunity to enter national and international design competitions including those set through the British Fashion Council and the Graduate Fashion Foundation.

Students have won the overall Womenswear and Gold Awards at Graduate Fashion Week, along with the national design competition, Fashion Awareness Direct, showcasing outfits at the start of London Fashion Week and the Textiles Institute award for a final collection as showcased at the Foreign Office in London.

A number of students have been selected to intern for Old Navy in San Francisco with two students offered full time employment on graduating.

If you’re a full-time undergraduate student starting your first year at Bath Spa University, you can apply for the Certificate in Global Citizenship, which you’ll study alongside your degree.

You’ll gain global awareness and add an international dimension to your student experience, and funding is available. On successful completion of the programme, you’ll be awarded a Certificate in Global Citizenship. This is in addition to your degree; it doesn’t change your degree title or results.

As a BA Fashion Design student, you’ll benefit from access to comprehensive digital workshops and specialist art and design facilities, including:

• Our student service point at Locksbrook where you can purchase subsidised art and design materials, hire out equipment for free and collect Library resources
• Access to our well-stocked Library at Newton Park
• Specialist technical workshops across all of art and design
• Access to studio space where you can work on projects and refine your practice

Fashion Design students benefit from access to great resources including:

• Individual studio space
• Machinery and specialist equipment
• Mannequin
• Printing facilities
• Access to specialist art and design workshops including embroidery, digital embroidery, screen printing, digital print, laser cutting, vinyl cutting, 3D print, and plastics.