Sustainable Fashion: Business and Practices MA
Why choose this course?
Sustainable Fashion sets out to challenge current thinking in fashion by embedding holistic sustainable design and business solutions throughout. The coursework requires critical thinking and problem solving and is designed to create systemic change to help combat fashion's unsustainable footprint.
Projects develop and deepen your understanding of sustainability as it relates to the fashion, textile and related industries. The course gives participants the opportunity to develop solutions and plot a new future for themselves and the fashion industry through developing new systems that challenge existing practices.
Students will choose their individual areas of focus, ensuring their outputs have real-world applications contributing to society, culture and ecology.
We are a member of the United Nations' Education and Academia Stakeholder Group (EASG).
| Mode | Duration | Attendance | Start date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full time | 1 year | 2 or 3 days a week | September 2024 |
| Main location | Kingston Business School and Kingston School of Art, Knights Park |
Reasons to choose Kingston University
- Kingston University is consistently rated among the best institutions in the UK for fashion and related disciplines.
- Kingston School of Art includes world leaders on the topic of sustainable fashion, who bring a depth and breadth of understanding to the topic.
- The programme's approach to pedagogy challenges the current system of fashion, plotting an alternative and more sustainable future for fashion businesses and related activities, based on critical thinking and creative problem solving.
What you will study
Students will study the human and environmental impacts of the mainstream fashion system throughout the entirety of the value chain. The programme will offer sustainable methodologies for the development of fashion businesses, services and practices. It will provide students with the knowledge and skills required to effect positive change through creative problem solving, and equip them with the management, business and creative decision-making skills to develop their own career path.
Please note that this is an indicative list of modules and is not intended as a definitive list. Those listed here may also be a mixture of core and optional modules.
Modules
Core modules for Teaching Block 1
The System of Fashion 1: Fashions impact
30 credits
This module addresses the diversity of impacts and challenges within the fashion system, giving students an in-depth understanding of the problems that perpetuate the unsustainability of the fashion industry from an ethical as well an environmental perspective. It connects the dots between appropriation, marginalisation, practice, and process by giving voice to alternative systems, people, and places. Lectures, presentations, and site visits will provide insight into the challenges the fashion system engenders, acting as a baseline for the exploration and identification of individual values to inform future work.
Sustainable and Ethical Practices
30 credits
This is a live project with direct interaction with an external stakeholder, intended to have a tangible outcome and based on human-centric design solutions for an under-represented group. Adaptive and universal design is used to tackle societal bias and stereotyping by presenting and sharing other stories, experiences, and histories. This is socially-centred design, with the objective of encouraging critical discourse about the culture of fashion inclusion and exclusion, diversity, and representation.
Core modules for Teaching Block 2
Design for Social Impact
30 credits
This module focuses on universal design in a broad context, with students working with either a local or global community in the development a collaborative response to a set of objectives and problems. This is an opportunity to revaluate the hierarchies embedded within the fashion system in the development of projects, skills, strategies, and trainings to support employability and integration into the greater community or industry. This is not a project ‘for' them, but ‘with' them, intended to develop products and skills and provide a focus for the community outside their experience and history, offering new possible futures.
The System of Fashion 2: Design, Business and Operational Responses
30 credits
This module reviews the various business types and operational strategies that act as an alternative to business-as-usual profit only businesses. Content evaluates sustainable businesses that positively impact people, planet, or both, with a particular focus on the role that technology plays in the sustainability of business, product and operations. Lectures, workshops, and site visits provide insight into the breadth of creative responses to the fashion industry's challenges, by sharing concrete examples of designers, brands, agencies, and technologies disrupting the system effectively.
Core modules for Teaching Block 3
Capstone Project
60 credits
The capstone project offers students the opportunity to challenge the status quo through their personal practice, impacting social, cultural, environmental, and ethical norms across a myriad of expressions and outputs, by encouraging them to push boundaries with radical outputs with transformational potential. Outcomes must be implementable and can include business or brand development, products, services, systems, strategies, websites, apps, communication vehicles, magazines, websites, film, e-zines and exhibitions without restriction, as long as they affect positive change in some aspect of the fashion industry.
Entry requirements
Teaching and assessment
Who teaches this course?
This course will be taught by leading academics and practitioners in sustainable and ethical fashion, business and technology.
This course is delivered by Kingston School of Art, which has its roots in the studio-based approach of Britain's art school system (the original School of Art was founded in the 1890s).
Today, for most courses, learning still takes place in our specialist studios, each subject area having its own fully-equipped studio, where you take part in classes, tutorials and critical reviews with fellow students. This strong studio culture also ensures regular interaction between students and tutors.
For non-studio-based courses, learning takes place in classroom-based seminars, tutorials and lectures, alongside site visits to museums, galleries, auction houses and other creative professional environments.
Postgraduate students may also contribute to the teaching of seminars under the supervision of the module leader.
Our students are encouraged to engage closely with the diverse businesses that make London one of the most important centres for the creative industries. Our industry connections mean we provide unique study opportunities, such as:
- the chance to have your work seen by eminent members of your profession;
- 'live' projects, site visits; and
- project work and workshops with visiting lecturers and industry specialists.
Our excellent reputation means that industry leaders regularly visit our student shows to see the best of the new talent.
Fees for this course
Additional costs
Depending on the programme of study, there may be extra costs that are not covered by tuition fees which students will need to consider when planning their studies. Tuition fees cover the cost of your teaching, assessment and operating University facilities such as the library, access to shared IT equipment and other support services. Accommodation and living costs are not included in our fees.
Where a course has additional expenses, we make every effort to highlight them. These may include optional field trips, materials (e.g. art, design, engineering), security checks such as DBS, uniforms, specialist clothing or professional memberships.
Facilities
You'll use our studio spaces and facilities to experiment and explore new ways to push the boundaries of projects and open discourse across disciplines. As a Fashion student, you'll have access to our working dress archive, the Benenden Fashion Archive, which features pieces dating from 1750 to present day.
Collaborative and multi-disciplinary teamwork is actively encouraged between students, across faculty courses, international institutions and with industry.
Throughout the course, you'll be encouraged to explore and develop expertise in current design approaches, techniques, media, and application including branding, editorial, interactive design, packaging and 3D design, advertising, information design, digital moving image, sustainable and experiential design.
After you graduate
The Sustainable Fashion Business and Practices curriculum helps to prepare students for a multitude of sustainably-focused undertakings and employment opportunities. These range from brand development, products, systems, models, and services, communication vehicles, not limited to medium, and expressed both physically and digitally, through to websites, blogs, apps, magazines, e-zines, exhibitions, installations and more. This course will address the gap between intent and the in-depth knowledge required for diverse application.
The curriculum prepares students for a rapidly-shifting industry, where the old models of career development no longer apply, impacted as they have been by the fourth industrial revolution, climate change, the global pandemic and a myriad of social and cultural movements that have shifted our collective value systems. Students may choose to set up their own international businesses or freelance across the creative and production industries.
Students are trained to develop their own work profiles as independent practitioners and advisors, and to integrate into the brand and corporate world across markets, with sustainability an increasing focus for all entities, allowing students the flexibility to enter into non-fashion specific roles.
We encourage research practice during the MA programme, with the potential to develop postgraduate practice at MPhil and PhD level.
Links with business and industry
This course incorporates live briefs with sector partners that encompass for-profit brands, social enterprises, not for profits and governmental and non-governmental agencies such as the Design Council, Ethical Fashion Initiative, Fashion Revolution, and ReDress in pursuit of social and environmental sustainability. A characteristic of the programme is a shared connection with other like-minded individuals and organisations that share values and purpose, whether between peers, faculty, guest lecturers, or external organisations.
Research areas
- Sustainability (economic, environmental, social and cultural) including CSR.
- Textile and production innovation.
- Fashion systems including supply and value chain.
- Innovation and technology in fashion services.
Course changes and regulations
The information on this page reflects the currently intended course structure and module details. To improve your student experience and the quality of your degree, we may review and change the material information of this course. Course changes explained.
Programme Specifications for the course are published ahead of each academic year.
Regulations governing this course can be found on our website.
