Fashion Communication and Styling BA (Hons) module details

Year one (Level 4)

Fashion Styling

This module introduces you to the context and practice of how stylists work within the global requirements and diverse opportunities offered by the fashion industry. You will be practically exploring the underlying concepts, principles and techniques for yourself.

Working through a series of mini projects, you will have the opportunity to participate in action based learning to contextualise and enhance your creative skills for the area of fashion styling. The module will also develop your ability to talk about your work as you present the outcomes of your project work.

Typical areas covered will include:

Creative research
Concept building
Fashion styling
Documenting creative development
Presentation
Portfolio building
Intellectual Property (IP)

Skills being developed within your Photography and Video for Fashion and Visuals and Illustration modules will also be useful for project development in this module too.

Photography and Video for Fashion

This module is delivered in two component parts - Still Photography and Moving Image/Video production.

The photographic component of this module allows each student to develop an aesthetic awareness and understanding of the language and processes of digital photography in relation to Fashion communication. Through a series of practical projects students are encouraged to gain technical skills in the use of digital cameras, to control the visual content of their still image making. Still image production techniques will be explored and developed including digital image manipulation, via practical workshops demonstrating the use of image manipulation software. Image output will be explored for both print and screen based systems.

The video component assumes no prior knowledge of video production. It introduces students to the practical language and grammar of production through a series of lectures, seminars, tutorials and practical exercises. Students will work in groups and will be introduced to video cameras, sound equipment, and digital editing software. The emphasis will be on providing a groundwork of craft and technique in moving image production from which students are able to research, develop, plan and produce their own video/moving image for screen based output.

Visuals and Illustration

This module will explore hand communication techniques including media experimentation, drawing, illustration and story boarding. You will also be introduced to Computer Aided Design (CAD) techniques to enhance and compliment hand rendering skills.

Working through a series of demonstrations and practical workshops, you will develop a personal portfolio of skills, techniques and final pieces of work. Key areas of content within the module include:

Drawing
Collage
Illustration
Use of media
Page layout
Story boards
Computer aided design

Communication Creation

Using the theme of editorial print based media this module will explore and develop skills and methodologies for the creation of still, print based communications. Your communications awareness will be enhanced through practice based investigation and analysis before moving forward into project based practical work to generate editorial communication outcomes appropriate to global fashion and lifestyle print based media and their differing audiences.

Typical areas covered will include:

Publication research
Audience analysis
Visual communication
Editorial creation
Campaign building
Fashion styling
Fashion graphics
Adobe InDesign
Printing styles and options

Design Cultures 1

This module introduces students to the context and awareness of both historic and contemporary design and to encourage and develop the skill of critical appraisal. It also allows students to develop an understanding of the impact of culture, heritage and ethical considerations when analysing design.

Year two (Level 5)

Professional and Promotional Practice

This module compliments subject specific skills and practice within the programme of study by focussing on professional and promotional skills. These skills and attributes become increasingly important factors as you begin to apply for jobs and work placements, including those opportunities available via the optional placement year and any other holiday work experience opportunities.

The module will consider two areas; the development of appropriate professional skills and the creation of suitable promotional materials. Professional skills will be both written and experiential, typically to include: CV writing, interview techniques, presentation techniques and skills auditing.

The promotional material will focus on digital platforms where a student can present themselves and their work, encouraging a proactive approach to becoming known and accessible to a range of potential employers. These digital tools can be continually updated with new content, both before and after graduation.

Concept to Consumer

Building upon all of your skill and understanding from the first year and now creatively developing projects and outcomes for styled concepts, fashion brands and diverse home and international fashion audiences.

This module focusses on and utilises a digital content and social media theme for the term's work. With the development of multiple social media platforms, companies and individuals are able to communicate directly with their consumers and potential customers globally through varied and media rich content. Capitalising on the opportunities generated by digital formats and the ever growing number of social media formats you will explore the roles and responsibilities of the fashion stylist and communicator when assisting fashion companies and brands to engage with their current customer base but also to attract a new audience to their communications, who could ultimately become their customers too.

You will explore how to research and identify consumer groups before moving forward to develop a range of potential digital content targeted at and engaging both existing and potential new audiences.

Image and Moving Image

This module builds on the foundation gained in Photography and Video for Fashion to extend students' practical and aesthetic knowledge of still and moving image production. The area of study will revolve around an understanding and exploration of contemporary fashion visuals in both moving and still image production across a range of output media. Students will therefore be required to study and practice both still and moving forms of image production within this module.

Students are required to consider a wide range of issues related to the production methodology, conventions and creative considerations of fashion imagery. These include, but are not limited to ethical, social, historical, theoretical, technical and contextual considerations within the genre.

Practical projects will advance each student's practical video and still production skills, and ability to realise creative concepts visually, aurally and structurally within the field of visual communication for fashion. The Practical projects will be informed by contextual lectures and screenings.

Fashion Event Styling

The theme for this term of study is event based styling and production. This module will provide you with an insight, understanding and practical skills for the very hands on activity of styling for targeted communication within physical event-based media and resources.

A fashion industry utilise live event in many formats to engage with audiences on a very personal and direct level. Events are also an opportunity to create additional formats of visual content for follow-up media and marketing applications. More than a logistical challenge, live event must also be styled to achieve maximum impact on the audience and secure a highly positive overall experience. This highly practical module will afford you the opportunity to develop skills and hands on experience of the variety of roles a fashion communicator and stylist will undertake responsibility for.

Typical content includes:

Event design
Location sourcing
Location environment design
Design and build
Event/show production

Design Cultures 2

It is usual for all studio-based degrees to include contextual study within each year of the course. This is done by including Design Cultures as an element of each year of your programme. Staff teaching on this module liaises closely with studio tutors to provide material that extends our critical understanding and complements other studio studies. The Design Cultures theme for the second year is the study and use of semiotics (a very appropriate and important subject and skill for visual communicators).

Optional Placement Year

You have the opportunity to undertake a yearlong placement within a desired sector of the industry that interests you and may even be inspiring and lining up your ambitions for what you want to do when you graduate. The placement year takes place between the second year and final year of the programme and is supported by the De Montfort University Placement Team, to ensure that your live industry experience is the most rewarding it can be. Not only will this placement year opportunity give you real, live, hands on industry experience for your CV and understanding, it will also give you academic credits, which can be used towards your final degree classification.

Year three (Level 6)

Fashion Communication and Styling Consultancy

Your opportunity to explore and manage a diverse range of consultative roles, creatively generating and managing the outcomes of consultation projects with a range of clients that can include; fashion industry, fashion events and design specialist practitioners. How you manage and develop bespoke communication projects and outcomes for your clients will draw on all of your skills to date in addition to giving you a broader portfolio of live project work and successful outcomes.

It is envisaged that you will undertake two consultancy projects within this yearlong module. At least one of the consultation projects should be with a design practitioner. You should consider working with fashion product related peers for this. At least one of the consultancy projects should be with a fashion business or event based company.

Working in a consultancy role, you will need to research and collaborate with your client to discover and understand what they need from a fashion stylist, pitch your ideas and then once agreed, undertake a negotiated and manageable package of consultancy project outcomes, for your client. Further information and examples of what this may include will be included within the module delivered content.

Personal Employability and Portfolio

This module prepares you for graduation and positions you to be able to confidently talk about and demonstrate all of your skills and experience in addition to making you career ready. The module content includes; skills auditing and career creation activities in addition to freelance and self-employed skills.

Core activities and staff led content will cover:

Pitching and quoting for freelance work
How to operate on a self-employed basis
Promoting yourself and your skills to global audiences
Creating opportunities for yourself
Developing a Major Project brief proposal

Also as part of this module, you will develop, define, describe the content, list the deliverables and negotiate a self-written project brief for your final major project in term two. Using the major Project module information, you will be able to describe the creative project brief you are setting for yourself and demonstrate how this work will meet the requirements of the module's learning outcomes and assessment criteria. The presentation of your major project brief will become your pitch for your final project on the course.

Major Project: Communication and Styling

This is your final and most significant piece of work from the Fashion Communication and Styling BA (Hons) programme. It is a negotiated project brief of creative research, exploration, experimentation and practical outcomes. The area of focus and level of production for this project will be decided (in negotiation) by you and will bring all of your skills and experience together into a final, major, impressive demonstration of the creative fashion communicator and stylist that you have become.

Starting with the Major Project brief you developed during the Personal Employability Portfolio module, you will have the opportunity to update this with any new ideas you have had and in response to summative assessment feedback.

The Major Project should demonstrate the breadth of your skills and understanding. You will record your research, development and experimentation work and move on to produce final communication and styling outcome(s). The outcome(s) may be one big piece of work that includes a number of production elements and skills or it may be a number of outcomes, each to fulfil a different need and using different skills. The project(s) will draw upon your learning and skill development from throughout the course and may draw upon activity based in drawn/hand generated work, print based media/editorial work, digital and social media targeted work and or live event based work, or a combination elements together.

Negotiating the content and outcomes of the Major Project with module staff will ensure that your proposed working methodologies and outcomes will be sufficient to meet the learning outcomes and assessment criteria of the module.

Design Cultures 3

This module comprises of a research element with mainly a written outcome in the form of an extended, illustrated essay, providing the opportunity to further develop theoretical and analytical skills relevant to professional fashion stylist and communicators. The module content will produce a unique and significant body of knowledge to your portfolio. You will define and discuss a self-selected topic and produce an extended essay.

Note: All modules are subject to change in order to keep content current.