Bachelor of Arts - Fashion Buying with Design (Honours)

BA (Hons) Fashion Buying with Design pairs commercial buying practice — range planning, critical path management, sourcing, negotiation and margin mathematics — with enough design and product training that graduates can brief, assess and amend product rather than only order it, a combination retailers increasingly ask for.

The design element is practical rather than decorative: students learn garment construction and specification well enough to hold technical conversations with suppliers, spot fit and quality problems in samples, and translate trend research into buyable product, with CAD and drawing taught as communication tools for the buying office.

A useful comparison for applicants weighing DMU’s two buying routes: this one adds product and design literacy, suiting students who want to shape what gets made, while the merchandising variant recorded elsewhere in this sheet adds forecasting and stock mathematics at a lower £15,750 fee, suiting the numerically confident. Both lead into head-office careers and both begin in administrative roles; the choice determines which conversations the graduate can lead. September entries run across the three recorded cycles at the fashion faculty’s standard £16,800 rate.

Teaching runs on live commercial patterns — range-building exercises against real price architecture, supplier scenarios, seasonal calendars — and DMU’s fashion school connections bring buying practitioners onto campus, while Leicester’s manufacturing base offers unusually direct exposure to the supply side of the negotiation.

Entry lands in buying administration and product development at £21,000–£25,000 with structured progression toward assistant buyer and beyond; the sourcing dimension makes the qualification particularly portable to South Asian supplier offices serving UK retail. The honours award carries Graduate Route rights at the 18-month post-2026 length, with dependants excluded across taught study.