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  • DeadlineStudy Details: MA 15 months full-time

Course Description

MA Fashion Futures places sustainability at the heart of fashion practice to help shape the next generation of fashion practitioners who prioritise environmental, social, economic and cultural criteria. Students are encouraged to critique the nature and purpose of design in a rapidly changing world, imagining and envisioning alternative ways in which fashion will be created and experienced in the future, whilst grounding their research in an understanding of the immense challenges that face the industry and wider society today.

In this ground-breaking course, you are encouraged to explore and develop experimental fashion practice and theoretical perspectives in parallel in order to conceptualise a transformed fashion system, one that values nature first and creates economic prosperity in service to this goal. Using your own knowledge, practice and experience as a starting point, you will identify new territories for fashion and work in new spaces with novel technologies, to communicate ideas in relation to design for sustainability to varied audiences. 

Through a combination of taught content and independent study, you will examine a diverse range of methodologies and forms of communication, including film, digital platforms, garment and artefact prototyping, publishing, events and performance. Key to MA Fashion Futures is critical fashion practice and reflexive thinking to test, reframe and make responses to existing paradigms. This will enable you to develop a very personal response to, and a critique of, the current paradigm and the role and activities of fashion in a changing world.

Through a systems thinking approach, the course has been developed to connect fashion’s social, cultural, environmental and economic aspects, examining perspectives from local to global scales and embracing fashion practice from both traditional and technological spheres. MA Fashion Futures offers a space to experiment with new ideas and physical/digital prototyping to challenge existing narratives as well as being a place to put principles into action in a manner that aligns with each student’s individual strengths, interests and future aspirations.

Students are encouraged to read widely, attend internal and external lectures, events and symposia, engage with UAL research hubs and researchers, and collaborate both across other postgraduate courses and across the wider University of the Arts community. 

Aligned to the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, the course involves research and knowledge exchange led teaching, with contribution from a range of the Centre’s members. Further specialist technical teaching and support is provided by the Digital Learning Lab.

Entry Requirements

  • Entry to this course is highly competitive: applicants are expected to achieve, or already have, the course entry requirements detailed below.
  • An Honours degree at 2.1 or above in a related discipline. Applicants with a degree in another subject may be considered, depending on the strength of the application;
    OR
  • Equivalent qualifications;
    OR
  • Relevant and quantitative industrial experience for a minimum of three years.

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Fees

For fees and funding information, please see website 

Student Destinations

All our postgraduate courses offer career development, so that you become a creative thinker, making effective contributions to your relevant sector of the fashion industry.

LCF offers students the opportunity to develop Personal and Professional Development (PPD) skills while studying through:

* Access to to speaker programmes and events featuring alumni and industry.

* Access to careers activities, such as CV clinics and one-to-one advice sessions.

* Access to a graduate careers service

* Access to a live jobsboard for all years.

* Advice on setting up your own brand or company.

Career paths

MA Fashion Futures graduates apply their skills in a multitude of ways and pursue diverse career paths. These might include the following:

  • Attaining a position within a brand, for example as a designer, and building sustainability from within the role, something that employers are increasingly looking for;
  • Attaining a specific sustainability related role within a company or brand, for example an MA Fashion Futures graduate was the Sustainability Manager at Alexander McQueen;
  • Setting up their own brand and fashion enterprise, recent examples include Trashion Factory and Post-Carbon Lab;
  • Embarking upon further research such as PhD, or a career in education.

Graduates from the course have achieved recognition through competitions and awards including the Kering Awards, Redress Design Awards, Proctor and Gamble Award, the Deutsche Bank Award, the Earth Awards and the Observer Ethical Awards.

Module Details

September to February:

  • New Fashion Perspectives (40 credits)
  • Collaborative Challenge (20 credits)

February to June:

  • Re-Imagining Fashion (40 units)
  • Research Methods (20 credits)

June to November:

  • Masters Project (60 credits)

Types of learning and teaching methods include lectures, seminars, masterclasses, workshops, small group presentations and tutorials. Learning hours per week vary, but typically students can expect up to 10 hours contact time per week. Students will also have regular opportunities for individual tutorials with the course leader throughout the course, including three 30-minute tutorials in block one, and six 30-minute tutorials in block two. Students will be allocated a supervisor for their Masters Project including 6 hours of support.

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