London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London is launching MA Fashion Enterprise Creation, a unique postgraduate course aimed at helping designers set up fashion businesses.
The course, which will sit within the College’s newly founded Fashion Business School, will provide a route for new fashion entrepreneurs to set up independent innovative fashion businesses, and develop and launch new viable fashion products. It is aimed at industry professionals with significant work experience and welcomes businesses from different fields operating within the fashion industry.
The course has been born out of the experience and expertise of the Centre for Fashion Enterprise (CFE), London’s pioneering business incubator which has been supporting emerging fashion design talent over the past ten years. The CFE is based at London College of Fashion, UAL and is part funded by the College. The Centre’s successes include designers such as Richard Nicoll, Peter Pilotto, Mary Katrantzou and Thomas Tait, to name a few.
MA Fashion Enterprise Creation is aligned to mirror the challenges and opportunities that start-ups and early-stage businesses experience. Students will use their own business as a case study whilst gaining and developing the knowledge and skills that will enable them to make informed and appropriate decisions in tough and competitive markets. The course will be taught by some of the most highly respected industry professionals with significant fashion business and industry experience and the teaching will be tailored around the individual student’s business needs.
The specialist programme will take a new approach to higher education. The flexible nature of this MA allows students to run their own businesses alongside their studies and teaching is scheduled around the fashion calendar and the fashion industry selling cycles so it is possible to complete the course alongside a career. Another unique element of this course is the pay as you go -option. Students can choose to take one or more units at a time in the order they prefer and can take up to five years to complete the Masters. All the course units are available as short courses – if an individual or a company feels they would benefit from support in specific areas such as production, business strategy or branding, they can choose to join the course for a single unit only.
Wendy Malem, Dean of the Graduate School and Director for Centre for Fashion Enterprise says: “A unique opportunity to learn how to set up and develop a fashion business while actually doing it in tandem – is just what young entrepreneurs or designers really need to get started. Informed by the success of designers supported by Centre for Fashion Enterprise, this is a pioneering ‘flexible learning’ course based on inspiring Master Classes followed by professional coaching. There can be no better way to establish a viable business with expert support”
MA Fashion Enterprise Creation is now open for application and the course is starting in October 2015.
For more information, go to www.arts.ac.uk/fashion
Photograph: Alex Maguire – Elly J Choi’s collection London College of Fashion’s MA15 show.
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