BA (Hons) Fashion Retail Management

Introduction to the course

This course is ideal if you aspire to a career in the fashion industry other than as a designer. It has been developed to enable you to combine your fashion interest with business and management skills while taking a creative approach and acquiring an excellent understanding of the fashion industry.

The course is unique in that it explores the roles of fashion professionals who play a key part in the fashion industry. These include trend forecasters, buyers, merchandisers, product developers, public relations, stylists, visual merchandisers, fashion event organisers as well as store management and fashion marketing. Teamwork, communication skills, commercial awareness, aesthetic sensibility and keen observational skills are fundamental to commercial success to enable you to become a confident individual and co-operative team-worker in the fast moving and highly competitive world of fashion.

Your learning experience

The course is extremely industry focused. Project-based learning will incorporate a great deal of industrial liaison and there is the opportunity for an industrial placement at Level 5.

There are regular overseas trips to Paris and New York and trips to Beijing and Shanghai are currently being planned. There are also opportunities for you to participate in an exchange with Politecnico di Milano or Ryerson University in Toronto in Level 5.

We have active links with Mod’Art International in Paris and are currently exploring viable links with India and Korea.

You’ll benefit from a team of staff who bring with them direct industry experience as well as a resourced library, and a dedicated CAD area for the course.

Harvey Nichols has supported our final show exhibition over the past few years, including the highly prestigious Harvey Nichols Scholarship prize for the best final year project. New Balance, Tencel Fibres and Claires Accessories have all given a very strong input into the course and participated in industry assessment.

Career prospects

Graduates are creative fashion individuals who aspire to careers in buying, retail management, merchandising, product development, fashion marketing, fashion event management, trends forecasting and public relations.

We have very successful UK and overseas students in all of these areas. We also welcome applications from mature students.

Graduate Profile: Emma Jane Taylor

Emma Jane who won the Harvey Nichols prize,was nominated for an award at Graduate Fashion Week and began her career in a London public relations company. In just one year she progressed to becoming Events Organiser at Burberry.