Skip to main content
Short course

Sustainable Fashion Design Online Short Course

Sustainable Fashion Design Online Short Course | Online
Integrate sustainable practices into fashion design. Understand environmental impacts and material choices. Develop cyclability strategies and differentiate your brand.

Next start months
August 2025
December 2025
January 2026
Tutor(s)
Stephanie Steele
Price
From £550.00

Course description

Course overview

Sustainable fashion has become an integral part of the fashion industry, whether you are practicing in the mainstream or the emerging market. Instead of being seen as a challenge for fashion designers and product developers, it's now viewed as an opportunity for brands to differentiate themselves from the competition. It requires more than a surface understanding of the issues and the responses to be able to make informed decisions based on social and environmental impacts.

This course provides an overview of sustainable fashion design practices, with examples of how designers can incorporate them into their work. The course will review the impacts of the mainstream fashion industry, as well as explore strategies to incorporate sustainable design concepts, conscious material choices and strategies for cyclability.

Each week we will explore a specific aspect of the industry and assign a task in response. The following week we will discuss your work with feedback from the tutor as well as your peers.

Who this course is for

This course is for fashion designers, fashion students and fashion enthusiasts who simply want to gain a greater understanding of sustainable fashion design.

Key information

Topics covered

  • The main impacts of mainstream fashion production and consumption
  • Alternative strategies for sustainable fashion
  • Material impacts
  • Circularity and cyclability
  • Design strategies
  • Ethical issues

Learning outcomes

  • Gain an understanding of the major environmental and human impacts of the mainstream fashion system
  • Learn about sustainable design responses to those impacts
  • Build a material knowledge that will enable you to make smarter material choices
  • Understand the various cyclability and circularity strategies
  • Learn strategies to create systemic change through design thinking and processes for a more sustainable fashion industry
  • Address the ethics of cultural appropriation, diversity, and ideals of beauty in fashion
  • Through small manageable projects gain hands on experience of the issues
  • Receive a digital badge and certificate of attendance

Materials

  • Notepad and pen

Please see our Guide to taking online short courses

Tutor

Stephanie Steele

Stephanie Steele is a trained fashion designer with experience in various areas of the supply chain from production to sales, and holds particular expertise in sustainable textiles for fashion including sourcing and distribution. Her creative practice focuses on systems change through the lens of objective and transparent knowledge exchange, primarily via textile experimentation, disseminating research through content creation, and community engagement. Alongside this, she has been an organic food grower for 5 years, working mostly in a North London kitchen garden where she grows flax and dye plants to engage visitors with the interconnectedness of our food, fibre and fashion systems.

Book a course

Loading