Fashion Design (with Foundation Year)

A fast-paced, dynamic and demanding course for determined and ambitious individuals who want a career in fashion.

• A reputation for producing highly individual, award-winning designers and practitioners.

• Member of the British Fashion Council Colleges Council, The Graduate Fashion Foundation, UKFT and Association of Fashion and Textile courses.

Based at Locksbrook Campus in bespoke fashion design studios, this course offers a comprehensive design education for dedicated and ambitious individuals looking for a specialist career in the fashion industry.

Our focus on the ethical, environmental and social contexts of fashion guides our creative process and approach. Our philosophy is to develop you as an individual to become an innovative and creative designer with a design aesthetic relative to the contemporary fashion industry. We aim to inspire a more sustainable and inclusive future.

There's an emphasis on ideas, creativity, traditional skills, and developing your own personal design ethos, underpinned by strong pattern-cutting and product development skills.

We take the fear out of the 'technical' side of fashion by combining the 'technical' and 'design' into one creative endeavour. We look for highly motivated students with a strong creative focus and clear determination to enter the highly competitive world of fashion.

More about the Integrated Foundation Year
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.

Year 0 – the foundation year.
Develop your ideas, skills and confidence during this Foundation year, in readiness for your chosen degree course. Begin with a fast-paced introduction to experimentation and play as forms of investigation through active drawing, observation, making and recording.

Year one
In your first year, you'll cover 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
In your final year 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.