BA (Hons) Fashion Styling and Visual Merchandising (Sandwich Year placement)

The course encompasses the inspirational, and experimentational elements of the fashion creative industries and beyond. With a focus on enhancing and curating individual styles, and polished yet contemporary creative outcomes via multiple media.
The Fashion Styling and Visual Merchandising course is part of the Fashion Styling study pathways, focusing on visual merchandising as the core subject. The course is designed to enhance and curate individual styles and create polished yet contemporary creative outcomes via multiple media. The course challenges the intersection between fashion, communication and innovation and seeks to drive meaningful change in the discipline through informed, researched, and detailed proposals combined with an intuitive vision, solid communication design, and a creative strategy.
The programme enables an in-depth immersion into industry practice, both in terms of simulated scenarios and real projects, where practical skills are gained, planning and organising fashion-based content, and exploring the fashion network on a global scale. The course also introduces the journey of an informed circular economy and ethical practices with regards to design, production, printing, and more. The outputs gained from this course are generated using both analogue and digital formats and supported by an extensive research methodology for each output.
The Fashion Styling and Visual Merchandising pathway starts in Level 5 Term 2, enabling the combination of creative skills with business acumen applied to a variety of industry-inspired innovative fashion concepts and outcomes. The course covers the basics of display dynamics, styling, outfit building, and creating core looks to engage the fashion consumer and generate sales. Topics such as store layout, lighting, fixtures, window presentations, graphic design, in-store displays, and overall store environment are covered, as well as in-store layout functions, fixture and fitting styles, mannequins and forms, and display installations.
The course also covers graphics and digital design skills to enhance visual concepts and their delivery, with a focus on gaining insight into business strategies and proposing concepts professionally. The course offers an opportunity to look into the future of the fashion industry, both offline and online, interrogating retail business strategies, the role of the buyer, fashion communication, branding, and analyzing new retail concepts, consumer behavior and current retail models through Omni channels. The programme concludes with a self-directed approach to research, development, and realization of a final major concept presented in a digital portfolio format.

Signed personal statement • Entry skill test completion including "creative ideas" (not for Business courses) • 80 UCAS points or minimum marks in one of the following most common qualifications: - GCE with two A level at grade BB - BTEC National Extended Diploma with MMP - Foundation Diploma with Pass - Access to Higher Education Diploma with Pass Overal - International Baccalaureate with 26 IB total points - Scottish Qualification with three Higher at grade B - Irish Leaving Certificate with four Higher at grade 4 - American High School Diploma with GPA 2.5 plus SAT score of 1200 in total or ACT score of 25 or Two AP at grade 4 or Completed 1st year of University/Junior College • I/GCSE with 4/C in English or equivalent. Applicants are required to provide proof of their English language ability. The English test score should be at least B2 on the CEFR level (e.g. IELTS Academic 6.0 overall, no less than 5.5 for each element) The normal minimum age for entry shall be 18 years. IELTS Academic 6.0 overall, no less than 5.5 for each element TOEFL - Overall score: 79 With no individual test score below: Listening: 17, Reading: 18, Speaking: 20, Writing: 17