London College of Fashion enjoys a global reputation for its unique, specialist fashion business courses that challenge traditional concepts of the industry, positioning fashion as a critical driver of global economic growth. The Study Abroad programme reflects LCF's commitment to cultivating responsible leaders and innovative thinkers, equipping students with the knowledge and skills to navigate the complexities of the modern fashion landscape while fostering sustainability and ethical practices.
You will enrol on 3 mandatory units and then may select elective units. You must take a minimum of 12 credits, and a maximum of 16 credits.
Credit value: 2 credits
Tutor contact: 20 hours
Self-directed study: 20 hours
Lead Tutor: Samantha Kemmy
The aim of Understanding Contemporary Cultures (UCC) is to introduce you to key concepts, debates and ideas present in contemporary culture today. We will do this together through in-class discussion, group activities and independent research. All of these activities will support your learning and prepare you to work independently on your assignments.
During this unit you will research key concepts, debates and terminology related to cultural and social theory, focused around three key critical themes:
You will be introduced you to a range of knowledges, perspectives and ideas surrounding:
As a group, we will approach these themes in an active and participatory way that will involve undertaking independent preparation each week and engaging with in class group activities. You are encouraged to maintain a questioning mindset and engage with each other and your tutor during each session.
By engaging with scholarly perspectives from critical and social theory you will be supported to think through fashion in a critical and evidenced way. This unit will help you to make critical connections in your own professional practice and experience of the fashion industry. Most importantly, you will develop key analytical and research skills that will support you to critically engage with the fashion and creative industries.
Lead Tutor: Michael Czerwinski
The aim of London Cultural Studies (LCS) is to orientate yourself, and explore aspects of London’s diverse culture, and creative landscape. As one of three mandatory units, you will meet and engage with all students across the UAL Study Abroad programme from CSM, LCC and LCF to build networks, and creative communities.
With LCS you will take creative risks, start conversations with people to find out about their lives, form new opinions, and energise your research methods with these newfound skills acting as city explorers and investigators.
We encourage you to explore all London has to offer from inspirational, historical, knowledgeable, and ‘alternative’ perspectives. You will learn about subcultures, genres, trends, as well as safely navigating yourself within a cultural capital city.
Lectures and conversations with your tutor and classmates will discuss the idiosyncratic behaviours, cultural attitudes and curious customs that make a city unique. As well as London, you’ll learn and draw wider inspiration from the sense of ‘Britishness’, always encouraged to think, listen, and speak critically.
Most LCS classes are predominantly field trips. You will do several visits, guided walks, and tours, going behind-the-scenes of unfamiliar spaces and areas to gain personal and fresh insight of this historically complex, challenging, creative city.
You will develop a personal body of research and experiences, which you will take forward as a memento of your time in London, to embed new ideas, values, and disruptive actions into your own creative practice, and beyond.
Lead Tutor: Laura Lightbody
The aim of Creative Histories (CH) will focus on how you can make a change for social purpose*, by examining creative outputs and practice from historical, sociological, and cultural perspectives. As one of three mandatory units, you will meet and engage with all students across the UAL Study Abroad programme from CSM, LCC and LCF to build networks, and creative communities.
In this project you will orientate yourselves in small teams, to collaborate and develop your proposition and presentation skills. In pairs you will pitch a speculative exhibition proposal delivered as a Pecha Kucha visual presentation.
By being an active researcher, acknowledging what has come before you, you will explore and examine a wide cross section of relevant and / or unexpected areas of interest. This will eventually act as the foundation of this unit, to make positive and impactful social change.
You will participate in a series of online lectures as well as guided visits, exhibitions in museums and art galleries around London, cultural centres and dynamic geographic landmarks each week. You will note take, annotate, and sketch in a research journal to document ideas and contextualise what creativity and culture means to you. This sketchbook will also connect to your London Cultural Studies research. Being critical is key.
Knowledge of the past allows for a considered understanding of why things are the way they are today, which in turn informs an intuition with which to predict future trends, cultural awareness and zeitgeist.
*Read more here about how UAL defines social purpose within creative practice.
Credit value: 4 credits
Tutor contact: 40 hours
Self-directed study: 40 hours
Lead Tutor: Eleanor Warrington and Jovanka Novkovic Davies
On your Commercial Buying and Product Development course you will be introduced to the process of developing garments for retail including the roles of the people involved: Buyers, Merchandisers, Designers, Product Development Specialists, and Garment Technologists.
During the course you may be working in small teams as is often the case in a large buying office. You will also work individually to construct a well-researched and visual report, working speculatively as a professional buyer / designer for a retailer.
Through lectures, discussions, conversations, range planning and forecasting, you will actively learn different aspects and methods of the industry through range creation, design, trend forecasting (in relation to fashion), merchandise planning, strategy, marketing, and costing.
Creative, commercial, technical, and economic considerations play vital roles in the development of commercial fashion collections, to ensure maximum success.
This challenging and stimulating course will offer insight into the mechanics of commercially focused aspects of the fashion industry, as well as offering you communication and introductory finance skills.
Credit value: 3 credit
Tutor contact: 30 hours
Self-directed study: 30 hours
Lead Tutor: Rebekah Roy
The aim of Fashion Styling will help you gain first-hand practical knowledge and insider industry insight. You will work with research methods, and in collaboration to experience the diverse roles and responsibilities that stylists have within creative teams.
You will learn about the differences between two professional areas: editorial styling (editorial test shoot), and brand ‘mindset’ commercial styling (campaign shoot).
You will research fashion editorial, catwalk, E-Commerce, advertising, celebrity / influencer, and the entertainment industry.
Practical workshops, lectures and conversations will hone your skills and develop your own unique creative approaches to styling, these include,
Working in allocated teams with a group theme, you will develop a rough shoot, and build a series of styled images that explore technical skill.
These visual statements may define a tribe, a trend, an approach, a movement, and / or a mood, all fundamental tools when communicating fashion contexts, whether they are defined for today, or when predicting the future.
Rebekah Roy’s work is driven by her love for creating compelling visual narratives for brands, designers, and artists alike. Her work has spanned continents, from Singapore to Nigeria. She has styled 75+ catwalk shows, including those for London Fashion Week, Rolls Royce, Ascot and Harrods. Rebekah's global vision and insightful expertise have made her a trusted name among leading fashion brands like HLA Group and Kate Spade. Collaborations with iconic musicians include Duran Duran, Billy Idol, Enya, Kate Nash, Max Rae. A strong advocate for sustainability, Rebekah leads by example. In 2020, she took the helm of Bare Fashion London, pioneering the UK’s first vegan fashion show and nurturing an online store dedicated to vegan fashion innovations.
Lead Tutor: Eelko Moorer
In Creative Visual Communication (CVC) you will learn the principals behind creating mood boards, fashion visuals and photography to express, explain, excite, and/or sell an approach, new product, or promote skillset.
A well-constructed visual board can be a powerful tool and impactful, non-verbal form of communication used across all levels of the fashion, and creative industries.
In CVC you will work both physically and digitally combining traditional image making techniques such as collage, alongside digital media resources.
You will combine found images with your own photography and find effective ways of using a camera. As a vital communication tool, photography is an effective way of introducing self-generated content into a presentation to communicate your own unique vision. This course is as much about your process, as it is about result.
As your project develops, you will also explore, typography, and font, colour, and texture, imagery, and layout, style, tone, and mood, composition, and placement, and basic graphic design.
Compiling impactful presentations is an acquired skill that can greatly influence the creative process and give you a competitive edge when communicating and pitching an idea(s).
Eelko Moorer is an independent practice-based researcher, and an artist-designer with his own studio practice crafting ideas into artefacts, he is also Course Leader for MA Footwear at London College Fashion. Eelko’s work investigates the interplay between the (trans-) personal experience, methodologies and processes of making, and their relations to the meanings that these designed objects evoke and invoke.
Eelko lectures, gives workshops and offers consultancy for education programs on the creative process, conceptual and critical thinking. His practice and output include designs for industry, bespoke and catwalk pieces, interior design objects for galleries, installation, performance and short film.
His work has been exhibited internationally in places such as The Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, MAD Paris, FIT New York, Saatchi Gallery London and with the British Council and Design Museum London.
Lead Tutor: Toby Meadows
Luxury brands may project the solidity and permanence of an impenetrable fortress, but this contrived deceit masks the creative skill and business acumen of entrepreneurially spirited individuals carefully managing every aspect of their fragile industry.
In this unit you will gain an understanding of the principles and practices behind luxury brand management including economic management, production and distribution channels of a brand.
This unit is aimed at aspiring fashion entrepreneurs who dream of starting or managing a luxury fashion brand and want an overview of the development, planning, marketing and management involved. Gaining a comprehensive understanding of the current global luxury brand climate is key to this unit. You will research trends, gain an understanding of Trend Forecasting and consider who is the luxury consumer.
Through a combination of lectures, discussions and workshops you will gain knowledge of the techniques needed to develop, produce and market a luxury product. Topics covered will include sourcing strategy, production process, target market customer profiling, financially driven marketing strategies and the broad range of tools with which to present product from packaging to e-commerce.
Toby Meadows is a Fashion Business Consultant and the International best-selling author of ‘How to Set up & Run a Fashion Label’ currently translated into 10 different languages. He is the founder and Director of TNM Consultancy, a collective of fashion professionals providing creative and business services to the fashion industry, as well as a Director of the London based cult womenswear designer label Belle & Bunty. For the past 10 years he has been a Visiting Lecturer at the London College of Fashion, invited to host conferences on Developing a Fashion Label, Brand Communication and the Future of Fashion as well as writing and delivering short courses for professional development within the fashion industry both in the UK and abroad.
Toby is regularly invited to speak and run workshops at international Fashion Weeks and has been asked to contribute as an industry expert to media publications around the world including the Financial Times.
Credit value: 2 credit
Lead Tutor: Lynsey Fox
Fashion is a highly competitive industry spread across a global marketplace. Achieving maximum success for a product/brand relies on effective Public Relations (PR) and promotion based on dynamic communication, effective relationship building, market awareness and industry knowledge. Tempting and daunting, the world of PR can be fast moving, dynamic, proactive, reactive, sometimes stressful, occasionally exciting and potentially glamorous.
In this unit you will gain an introduction to the role of PR in the fashion industry.
Exploring media opportunities for PR is key to this course. You will review written and visual information, news, press releases, events and the essential ingredients for a ‘press pack’ to inform your own ability to generate editorial coverage through servicing the media. Topics covered will include understanding target markets, industry and consumer fashion and media lead times, the reach of relevant media including both national and regional women’s and trade press.
An awareness of online PR and marketing activities is also critical to understanding how these work in relation to fashion e-commerce businesses and how ‘virtual’ activities across social media, blogging and online advertising work in tandem with the ‘actual’ world.
You will also gain an understanding of how an effective image can influence the public and media.
Lead Tutor: Debbie Flowerday
Shop window displays and store design can define a fashion brand and steer the agenda to sell a product. A good window is the first interface with which to capture the attention of a potential consumer, a good interior sets the mood to buy. Getting this right requires an understanding of consumer behaviour, brand/product positioning, trend and creative flair.
In this unit you will study a variety of visual merchandising presentation techniques as well as examine the art of space planning and store layouts.
This unit provides an overview of visual merchandising within a fashion retail context. You will be guided through the process of designing your own store using the information gained within the class. Topics covered will include relevant theoretical concepts and retail design and contemporary practices.
Delivered in an informal teaching style the class is structured to include lectures, discussions, site visits and practical exercises.
Debbie Flowerday has been a visual merchandiser for many years; her knowledge and experience of the display and visual merchandising industry is extensive. She has worked globally for well known retailers including Max Mara, Mary Quant, Miss Selfridge, Top Shop, Gucci, Royal Worcester and the V&A. Her key skills include Visual Merchandising, Window Concept and Product Styling, Retail Design, Store Layout, Interior Design, Exhibition, Product Styling, Photographic Styling, Events & Product Launches and VM Training & Guidelines.
The fashion consumer is becoming all the more powerful, more discerning and more difficult to understand and please. Consumers are now combining mainstream and designer products more readily. This evolving behaviour has led to a shopping democracy where selective extravagance is ‘normal’. From a marketing perspective these are changing, challenging yet exciting times. Communicating differentiation and unique value is the key to success.
In this unit you will examine the complexities of marketing fashion in the 21st century, enabling you to understand and identify a range of relevant marketing strategies.
The theory of marketing will be explained and you will gain practical insight into how to apply marketing to your fashion practice, whether you are studying design or fashion business. With it becoming increasingly normal for product development to hurtle from concept to consumer in just three weeks, marketing strategies have to be faster conceived, better informed and more precisely targeted than ever before. How you convey your message is based on knowing what you have to say, who should be listening as well as how and when they need to hear it.
In Trend Forecasting you will work collaboratively, each taking on the speculative role of ‘editor’ where you will negotiate your team / solo responsibilities, and tasks.
Your team will research how fashion trends begin, and how they can evolve to influence a wide range of fashion product areas, posing questions such as,
You will challenge how you observe and evaluate cultural influences that inform the development of your fashion ‘instinct’ and ‘intuition’.
Your hands-on learning will be exposed to a variety of forecasting publications and media as well as being guided through the principals of forecasting to appreciate the importance and complexities of market intelligence.
Analysing the role of trade fairs, magazines, trend agencies and social media will give insight into how the world of forecasting operates.
Through creative and interactive classes, lectures, presentations, workshops, and field trips, you will observe, analyse, and evaluate external information such as catwalks, collections, and commercial trends.
You will create trend forecasts for SS2026 or AW2026 for one of the following brands:
In your teams, you will also research either an art movement / artist, or dance movement / dance company as an additional starting point to gather inspirational research. You will explore colour, fabrication, silhouette, movement, garment detail, technical detail, accessories, and materiality.
You will then develop convincing rationales as to why your concepts should work today, and in the future.
In a very short period of time the ways in which written and visual content are disseminated haven't merely changed, they have exploded. The world of marketing is 'noisier' than ever before with ever evolving systems of communication feeding ever growing appetites for consuming information. In a contradictory world where fresh new content is craved but almost immediately discarded, an awareness of the complex mechanics of social media is essential.
In this unit you will examine the evolution of various social media platforms to gain a comprehensive understanding of their current impact and evolving potential. You will then use this research to inform the building of your own personal social media campaign.
Case studies including cultural institutions, fashion brands, cultural movements and individuals in the cultural sector will inform the approach to evolving your own personal project. Intuitive and reactive activity fuels the progression of social media, strategic decision making and constant evaluation to generate meaningful analytics and are key working methods covered in this unit. Market awareness, consumer habit, trend anticipation and market saturation need to be recognised so that they can be avoided or exploited in the creation of your own distinct and engaging voice.
Lead Tutor: Megan St Clair Morgan
The aim of Fashion Drawing is to take you to another skill level, find access to new techniques and materials, whilst retaining your individuality. You will learn how-to create a fashion drawing from concept to completion.
Through observational drawing of figures, garments, and fabrics, you will learn to communicate and express fashion accurately and effectively through illustration.
This is a very practical unit with a strong emphasis on both demonstrations and individual feedback. You will have the opportunity to draw directly from a live model, as well as use mixed media recycled waste.
You will experiment with colour rendering using a variety of media, exploring composition, scale, proportion. You will gain confidence in drawing fashion figures and line-ups, including drawing hands, faces, hair, and feet. Experimenting with ways to capture gesture, movement, mood, volume, drapery, and contour.
You will also be given the opportunity to observe and understand the value and application of tonal range, accent, contrast, emphasis, texture, and pattern.
The outcome will be a portfolio of fashion drawings complemented with a personal sketchbook. In an image saturated world, this course makes fashion drawing more relevant today than ever before.
Megan St Clair Morgan is represented by Lipstick of London Agency, and works as a fashion and lifestyle illustrator, creating work for clients including John Lewis, Tanqueray Gin, Estee Lauder, 111Skin, Matches Fashion, Stylist Magazine, Cartier, Vogue and JW Anderson amongst others. Alongside illustration, Megan works freelance with brands and businesses to develop and implement communications strategies, and as a freelance copywriter / editor. With experience in social media marketing, paid social, strategy development, email marketing, website development, WCAG 2.1 accessibility and SEO optimization. With a wealth of experience working in communications across the Fashion Industry and Higher Education sector, she has a unique perspective and diverse skillset.
Lead Tutor: Lucy Tammam
Technical innovation and ethical concerns are forcing changes across all fashion industry market levels. These are both distinct drivers of change in their own right but are often thought of as mutually reliant because they work so successfully as mutual influencers.In this unit you will be introduced to the roles of garment technologists, designers and manufacturers, in the development of fashion products and how they work with the supply chain
This course takes a fresh look at the fashion industry, analysing the skills of garment technology and design and the importance of marketing and story telling by responding to ethical and environmental concerns throughout the process of creating and selling fashion.The complete production process will be explored starting with the sketch and progressing from material selection and sampling through to getting the right fit and quality before manufacture. You will be introduced to the concept of an ethical approach to manufacture at each stage of production. This covers traceability and environmental considerations, as well as workers’ rights.Using industry case studies you will gain an insight into current fashion business models and also learn about new technology and innovations that are set to influence the fashion industry in the future.
This course will deepen your understanding of fashion product manufacture from a technical perspective as well as offer insights into how sustainability can be used as a marketing and story telling tool.
Lucy Tammam is a trailblazing sustainable couturier balancing a creative traditional garment construction craft practice with research and development of ethical, ecological and cruelty free practices within the fashion industry. Acclaimed for innovative beautiful cuts seen on red carpet celebrities, unique brides and the London Fashion Week catwalk.
An alumna of Central Saint Martins, Tammam’s award winning, high end sustainable fashion label showcases and has customers across the world. A dedicated slow fashion activist, entrepreneur and lecturer, Ms Tammam has developed innovative business models and compelling teaching methods which explore ideas of circularity and degrowth to align with the need for change in the industry.
Credit value: 3 credits
Creative Direction involves an intuitive creativity heightened by industry knowledge and sound cross-disciplinary cultural awareness. It’s a skill that brings together concept, design, content and strategy to make an aesthetic statement with which to most effectively communicate an idea. Exercised well, it’s a powerful role in the realisation of artistic vision used across the fashion industry to drive marketing strategies.
In this unit you will explore the methods of communicating ideas, curating and editing concepts in order to reach target audiences and convey relevant and complex messages.
This course offers insight into the growing role of Creative Direction as a communication tool for fashion media and fashion business. Researching and analysing contemporary fashion/lifestyle media campaigns and creative projects is key to this unit. Through seminars, discussions and workshops you will have the opportunity to gain a clear understanding of relevant fashion industry working methods, target audience expectations and business goals whilst being pushed towards identifying your strengths and realising your personal vision. This course is recommended to students interested in working in journalism, design, publishing, branding, advertising, curating, creative agencies and general fashion and lifestyle media related projects.
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studyabroadoffice@arts.ac.uk
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