Sustainable Fashion: Business and Practices MA
Subject and course type
- Design
- Creative professions
- Postgraduate
Kingston University’s MA in Sustainable Fashion Business and Practices will give you the change-led perspective you need to make a real impact in the industry.
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Envision a new future for fashion
Challenge current thinking and explore transformational systems
On our Sustainable Fashion: Business and Practices MA, you'll challenge current thinking in fashion by exploring holistic sustainable design solutions.
The programme is designed to create systemic change. As a result, you're come up with innovative and ethical solutions, as well as have the chance to transform systems and organisations. Projects are designed to develop and deepen your understanding of the multi-dimensionality of sustainability as it relates to fashion.
You'll have the opportunity to plot a new future for yourself and the fashion Industry by displacing a dysfunctional system and replacing it with practical and inspirational alternatives. This is fashion not designed to produce more ‘stuff’ but intended to develop systems and practices which intervene in the mainstream fashion system.
The course capitalises on the studio ethos of learning by doing. You'll produce tangible outcomes and solutions to industry problems through creative problem-solving and crossing disciplines for inspired responses. The work you do will challenge the accepted and traditional methodologies within the fashion system. You'll be encouraged to question every step of the fashion process from inspiration to end-of-life considerations.
Using design thinking, the course will support you in the analysis of industry impacts. You'll be able to test ideas in the development of solution creation. Project work adheres to the four pillars of sustainability: economic, environmental, social and cultural.
Before entering this course my knowledge on sustainability was less than half of what I know now. Sustainability was one of the topics discussed on many occasions during my undergrad, but this course gave me a much deeper understanding on what sustainability really is and the other factors that comes with it that many are not aware of.
Student work
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Janhavi Dandwate Values Map 2023.
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Voices of Hope Sisterhood Sanctuary craft collaboration 2023. Student team Sacha Daly, Paulina Czajor, Wenshan Shi, Shihui Chen, Victoria Cardona Garcia-Atance and Lucia Marshall Medlik.
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Voices of Hope Sisterhood Sanctuary illustrated postcards 2023. Student team: Jingjing Dai, Caya Chen, Yijie Zhao, Wenxi Ji, Xiaotong Chen and Wendy Jiang.
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MEHER Embroidery India Instagram mock-up 2023. Student team: Jingyi Ma, Jing Zhang, Erdi Wang, Yuqing Zhang and Si Wu.
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Communicating Differences on Disability Zine 2024. Student team: Vanessa Aguilar, Tasha Clements, Jiahua Liu, Priyanshi Gupta and Shayla Sakora.
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Communicating Differences on Disability Zine 2024. Student team: Vanessa Aguilar, Tasha Clements, Jiahua Liu, Priyanshi Gupta and Shayla Sakora.
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Communicating Differences on Disability Zine 2024. Student team: Vanessa Aguilar, Tasha Clements, Jiahua Liu, Priyanshi Gupta and Shayla Sakora.
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Communicating Differences on Disability Zine 2024. Student team: Vanessa Aguilar, Tasha Clements, Jiahua Liu, Priyanshi Gupta and Shayla Sakora.
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MEHER Embroidery India artisan lookbook 2023. Student team Jingyi Ma, Jing Zhang, Erdi Wang, Yuqing Zhang and Si Wu.
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Natal Colombia artisan photoshoot 2023. Student team Jingjing Dai, Wenxi Ji, Wenyan Qian, Wenshan Shi, Xiaotong Chen and Shihui Chen.
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Warmachic Peru artisan project photoshoot. Student team Vanessa Aguilar, Tasha Clements, Jiahua Liu, Priyanshi Gupta and Shayla Sakora.
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Warmachic Peru artisan project photoshoot. Student team Vanessa Aguilar, Tasha Clements, Jiahua Liu, Priyanshi Gupta and Shayla Sakora.
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Shimena Ethiopia artisan photoshoot 2024. Student team Bridgitte Amaut, Dristhi Babu, Frida Lidbom, May Flower and Vaibhavi Joshi
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Jiayi Liao Capstone project 2023.
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Fiona Barrett Capstone project 2023.
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Sacha Daly Magazine Capstone 2023.
Why choose this course
While you study, you'll benefit from teaching staff who are world-renowned researchers and practitioners. Not only are we ranked Gold in the Teaching Excellence Framework, we're consistently rated among the best institutions in the UK for fashion and related disciplines.
Workshops and studios
Explore, collaborate and share ideas in our state-of-the-art workshop facilities, designed by Stirling Prize-winning studio, Haworth Tompkins. Facilities are open to all Kingston University students, and include:
- 3D workshops, with spaces for ceramics, concrete, resin-casting, plastics, metalwork, woodwork, bronze-casting foundry, set design and large scale model making
- Animation and post-production studios
- A digital media workshop
- Knitting and sewing workshops with digital and analogue facilities, plus a working dress archive including from 1750 to the present day
- A HackSpace for collaborative, creative, solutions-focused projects
- A letterpress and printmaking workshop
- A moving image workshop, with studios, an editing suite and industry-standard equipment
- A fully-equipped photography workshop
University museums and galleries
Kingston University has two on-site galleries, which offer exciting opportunities for career progression. Grade II-listed Dorich House is the former home of the sculptor Dora Gordine, while the Stanley Picker Gallery is one of the UK’s leading university galleries. Our Knights Park campus also has a bookable project space for large-scale exhibitions.
Professional Membership
Sustainable Fashion: Business and Practices is a registered member of the United Nations' Education and Academia Stakeholder Group (EASG) in support of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Art School Experience
As part of Kingston School of Art, students benefit from joining a creative community where we encourage collaborative working and critical practice.
Our workshops and labs are open to all disciplines, enabling students and staff to work together, share ideas and explore multi-disciplinary making.
Course content
You will study the human and environmental impacts of the mainstream fashion system throughout the entirety of the value chain. The programme offers sustainable methodologies for the development of fashion businesses, services and practices. It provides you with the knowledge and skills required to effect positive change through creative problem solving, and equips you with the management, business and creative decision-making skills to develop your own career path.
This is an indicative list of modules and is not intended as a definitive list.
Modules
Core modules for Teaching Block 1
30 credits
This module addresses the diversity of impacts and challenges within the fashion system with a focus on fashion's value chain, to gain an in-depth understanding of the problems that perpetuate the unsustainability of the fashion industry from an ethical as well an environmental perspective. Lectures highlight industry practices in the dominant western fashion system and evaluate sustainable practices that positively impact people and planet by giving voice to alternatives systems, people and places. This module is intended to act as a baseline for you to explore and identify their own values that will inform future work.
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. This module is in partnership with an under-represented community, for the development of a supportive strategy of communication using fashion as the lens. This project is intended to tackle societal bias and stereotyping by presenting and sharing other stories, experiences, and histories, using fashion as a vehicle to humanise and integrate communities through communication. This is socially centred design, with the objective of encouraging critical discourse about the culture of inclusion and exclusion, diversity, and representation.
Core modules for Teaching Block 2
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 and workshops 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.
30 credits
This module focuses on human-centred design modalities in a broad context, focusing on the needs of a community of textile artisans in the development of strategies to sustain or expand upon their material culture. You will work in teams to develop collaborative and tangible responses to a set of objectives and problems as defined by the artisans themselves. This is not a project ‘for’ them, but ‘with’ them, intended to develop collaborative strategies working with artisans as partners offering new possible futures with a multitude of possible outcomes, which must be tangible and implementable. This is an opportunity to reevaluate the hierarchies embedded within the western fashion system as it relates to provenance and value.
Core modules for Teaching Block 3
60 credits
The capstone project offers you the opportunity to challenge the status quo through your personal practice, impacting social, cultural, environmental, and ethical norms across a myriad of expressions and outputs. It encourages you to push boundaries with radical outputs that have transformational potential. You will have the freedom to negotiate their own output as long as it results in the tangible realisation of strategies, products, or processes with implementable outcomes that might include business or brand development, services, systems, or technological solution or service as long as they affect positive change in some aspect of the fashion industry.
We were really fortunate to be able to attend lectures from some of the world's top minds in sustainable design thanks to personal contacts in the industry. I now have a broader perspective on sustainability by the end of this module.
Career opportunities
After you graduate
The Sustainable Fashion Business and Practices curriculum helps to prepare students for a multitude of sustainably focused undertakings and employment opportunities that include:
- Brand and product development
- Sustainable supply chain management
- Sustainable systems and services
- Materials sourcing
- Sustainable fashion communications
- Artisan collaborations
- Progressing to MPhil and PhD level study
Live briefs
As part of the course, you’ll have opportunities to work on live briefs with sector partners that champion social and environmental sustainability. Potential clients include:
This course incorporates live briefs with sector partners in pursuit of social and environmental sustainability. Past collaborators have included:
- Build a Nest New York
- The Santa Fe International Folk Art Market
- Voices of Hope
- Kingston University’s Disabled Student Society
Expert speakers
Our industry links have resulted in a number of student opportunities and recognition including:
- Craft of Leather – an invitation-only workshop series in Tuscany with the Vegetable Tanned Leather Consortium
- The Bilbao International Art and Fashion Contest
- Work study with the Saheli Women
- Internships with Safia Minney and By Walid
- The North American Linen Association
- The Polish Cultural Institute
- Deloitte’s Environmental and Social Governance
Industry links
You’ll benefit from Kingston University’s strong connections with industry leaders. Previous opportunities range from professional experience to international recognition, including:
- Craft of Leather – an invitation-only workshop series in Tuscany with the Vegetable Tanned Leather Consortium
- The Bilbao International Art and Fashion Contest
- Work study with the Saheli Women
- Internships with Safia Minney and By Walid
- Employment with: The North American Linen Association, Marks and Spencers, Benetton, Two Hundred Million Artisans, The Polish Cultural Institute and Deloitte's Environmental Social Governance
Teaching and assessment
When not attending timetabled sessions, you will be expected to continue learning independently through self-study. This typically involves reading and analysing articles, regulations, policy documents and key texts, documenting individual projects and preparing coursework assignments.
Your independent learning is supported by a range of excellent facilities including online resources, the library and CANVAS, the University's online virtual learning platform.
At Kingston University, we know that postgraduate students have particular needs and therefore we have a range of support available to help you during your time here.
A course is made up of modules, and each module is worth a number of credits. You must pass a given number of credits in order to achieve the award you registered on, for example 360 credits for a typical undergraduate course or 180 credits for a typical postgraduate course. The number of credits you need for your award is detailed in the programme specification which you can access from the link at the bottom of this page.
One credit equates to 10 hours of study. Therefore 180 credits across a year (typical for a postgraduate course) would equate to 1,800 notional hours. These hours are split into scheduled and guided. On this course, the percentage of that time that will be scheduled learning and teaching activities is shown below. The remainder is made up of guided independent study.
- 19% scheduled learning and teaching
The exact balance between scheduled learning and teaching and guided independent study will be informed by the modules you take.
Your course will primarily be delivered in person. It may include delivery of some activities online, either in real time or recorded.
Assessment typically comprises exams (e.g. test or exam), practical (e.g. presentations, performance) and coursework (e.g. essays, reports, self-assessment, portfolios, dissertation).
The approximate percentage for how you will be assessed on this course is as follows, though depends to some extent on the optional modules you choose.
- 100% coursework
We aim to provide feedback on assessments within 20 working days.
Fees and funding
| Fee category | Annual Fee |
|---|---|
| Home (UK students) | |
| Full Time | £14,000 |
| Part Time | £7,700 |
| International | |
| Full Time | £23,700 |
| Part Time | £13,035 |
| Fee category | Annual Fee |
|---|---|
| Home (UK students) | |
| Full Time | £13,500 |
| Part Time | £7,425 |
| International | |
| Full Time | £21,800 |
| Part Time | £11,990 |
Fees for future course years
Part time
If you start your second year straight after Year 1, you will pay the same fee for both years.
If you take a break before starting your second year, or if you repeat modules from Year 1 in Year 2, the fee for your second year may increase.
Scholarships and bursaries
Interested in studying an MA in Sustainable Fashion Business and Practices at Kingston? The following funding support is available:
Get a 40% reduction in fees for taught masters or postgraduate diploma courses with September start dates. Find out more.
Receive up to £5,000 towards tuition in your first year of study. Find out more.
Get a 15% reduction in tuition fees. Find out more.
Receive £2,500 towards developing and producing work during your final year. Find out more.
Kingston University offers a 10% discount on full- and part-time postgraduate degree course tuition fees. Please read our postgraduate finance page to find out more.
Additional course costs
Some courses may require additional costs beyond tuition fees. When planning your studies, you’ll want to consider tuition fees, living costs, and any extra costs that might relate to your area of study.
Your tuition fees include costs for teaching, assessment and university facilities. So your access to libraries, shared IT resources and various student support services are all covered. Accommodation and general living expenses are not covered by these fees.
Where applicable, additional expenses for your course may include:
Our libraries have an extensive collection of books and journals, as well as open-access computers and laptops available to rent. However, you may want to buy your own computer or personal copies of key textbooks. Textbooks may range from £50 to £250 per year. And a personal computer can range from £100 to £3,000 depending on your course requirements.
While most coursework is submitted online, some modules may require printed copies. You may want to allocate up to £100 per year for hard-copies of your coursework. It’s worth noting that 3D printing is never compulsory. So if you choose to use our 3D printers, you’ll need to pay for the material. This ranges from 3p per gram to 40p per gram.
Kingston University will pay for all compulsory field trips. Fees for optional trips can range from £30 to £350 per trip.
Your tuition fees don’t cover travel costs. To save on travel costs, you can use our intersite bus service. This route links the campuses and halls of residence with local train stations: Surbiton, Kingston upon Thames and Norbiton.
I'd like to take a moment to express my appreciation to Dr Sass Brown. From facilitating insightful discussions to helping us overcome challenges, mentoring our projects, and encouraging our diverse ideas and outputs, she demonstrated unwavering support. Dr Sass Brown's dedication and commitment were inspiring, and she truly practiced what she preached. She is a role model whom I will continue to look up to in my journey in sustainable fashion. Her efforts made our success possible.
Apply for this course
Before you apply
Please read the entry criteria carefully to make sure you meet all requirements before applying.
How to apply online
Use the course selector drop-down at the top of this page to choose your preferred course, start date and mode, then click 'Apply now'. You will be taken to our Online Student Information System (OSIS) where you will complete your application.
If you’re starting a new application, you’ll need to select ‘new user’ and set up a username and password. This will allow you to save and return to your application.
Application deadlines
We encourage you to apply as soon as possible. Applications will close when the course is full.
After you apply
If the admission tutor wants to see your portfolio, we will email asking you to upload your zipped portfolio to the OSIS portal within three weeks. If we need more information or want to invite you for an interview, we will be in touch directly. After that you will then hear whether your application has been successful.
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. Find out more about course changes
Programme Specifications for the course are published ahead of each academic year.
Regulations governing this course can be found on our website.
