Bachelor of Arts - Fashion Design (Honours)

BA (Hons) Fashion Design at DMU teaches the full designing-to-making chain across three years: drawing and design development, pattern cutting by hand and digitally, garment construction, textiles and fabric behaviour, CAD, and the industry contexts of costing, sizing and range planning, building toward a final collection shown to industry audiences.

Studio and workshop hours dominate the timetable — industrial machines, pattern tables, digital printing and knit facilities — because the school’s conviction is that a designer who cannot construct cannot communicate with a factory. Live briefs and competitions run through the middle year, and Leicester’s working garment industry sits close enough that factory visits and sampling contacts are routine rather than exceptional.

One practical advantage rarely advertised: Leicester still houses working garment factories within the city, so students can see production runs, meet machinists and understand real manufacturing tolerances during term time rather than through video — access that graduates of campus-isolated fashion schools genuinely lack. Applicants should also budget for materials, which in design disciplines are a real annual cost beyond the £16,800 tuition, and should arrive with a portfolio habit already formed, since the course builds on drawing and making practice from the first week.

The final-year collection is the qualification in practical terms: research, development, toiles, construction and presentation, defended in a portfolio that employers open before they read a transcript. Graduates leave with garments, a documented process and, for many, exhibition exposure through the school’s showcase calendar.

Employment realities need saying kindly: entry pay of £20,000–£25,000 in UK design rooms, competition heavy, and the strongest early value often found in technical and product-development seats rather than pure design; the skill set travels exceptionally well into South Asian manufacturing and buying offices. The honours award qualifies for the Graduate Route — 18 months of open work permission under the rules current applicants will graduate into — with no dependants on taught study.