FASHION & THE CITIES

Curriculum:

The course gives participants the unique opportunity to experience three different cities, London, Paris and Milano with everythingthey have to offer to the student of creative, innovative and luxurious creative fashion. This programme of study is designed tobe an experience infused with style, creativity, history, art, and technology, giving insight into the mechanisms and processesessential to fashion’s global reach.

Week 1: participants will use London as the ultimate source of cutting edge and innovative inspiration to create a capsule collectionembracing the cultural diversity and energy of the city. They will look at key fashion designers resident in the city whoalso draw their inspiration from its many creative hubs, galleries, exhibitions and events and learn to capture their own ideas ina collection underpinned by trend analysis.

Week 2: the second week takes place in Paris where students will be given the opportunity to research the luxury fashion market.They have the chance to work on a visual business plan intended to launch a new line for an existing brand. Couture is stillheavily rooted in the fashion industry of Paris, which provides a classic backdrop known for its elegance and superb quality.

Week 3: in the third week students will be based in Milano, the home of style and the industrial creative hub of Italy where fashionphotography and styling where born. Here participants will have the opportunity to chose a fashion season and an Italian brand andresearch their own trends to produce their own photo-shoot. Participants will play the role of a real stylist, coordinating a wardrobeof clothes inspired by their research to produce a refined and contemporary series of fully accessorised photographic images.

Week 4 (optional Firenze): Firenze is home to luxury brands such as Gucci, Ferragamo, Cavalli, and Emilio Pucci, and togenerations of highly skilled artisans and craftsmen. By investigating cultural and historical influences on style, quality andcraftsmanship participants rediscover ‘Italianness’; analysing top accessories brands, and the changing tide in the InternationalMenswear industry, with Florence and the Pitti Uomo Fashion Fair a key appointment in the fashion calendar.The whole course has a strong cultural perspective and an intense schedule of field trips to museums, galleries, exhibitions, andart institutions, enhancing participants understanding, and overall vision of fashion & art.

Short course

Week 4 (optional Shanghai): the final week of the programme takes part in the fashion capital of the East, Shanghai. This is a research trip into the future of fashion, Shanghai being the most important emerging economy where garment production, technology and innovation all thrive side by side. Participants have the opportunity to demonstrate their achievement of the intended learning outcomes through a variety of tests appropriate to their field of study.

Week 4 (optional Miami): Through an experiential approach to learning, this course explores fast moving digital and social media driven study into key notions of contemporary fashion marketing and branding, ‘Glocal’ identities, co-branding, influencer marketing and customer psychographic research. By the end of the week participants will have worked to create a final mood board for a 3-piece collection, and co-branding digital strategy proposal (Instagram); a self-reflective digital journal records the whole process.