BA (Hons) Fashion Design portfolio guide

You'll need this guide if you're applying for BA (Hons) Fashion Design.

The course allows you to master traditional and modern fashion and textile design methods alongside with it’s strong sustainable and ethical design principles.

You'll need a strong interest and ability in design and visual research skills, as well as a desire to learn the traditional and digital making skills required on the course.

What to expect

Your digital portfolio should showcase the depth and breadth of your creative ability, idea generation and development, while demonstrating an enthusiasm for the course and subject area.

To supplement the images you submit, we’d recommend either including a supporting statement or annotations alongside each of your images.

Our preference would be for your portfolio to be presented as a PDF. If you create this as a powerpoint presentation, it allows you to add text boxes to annotate your work. This can then be converted easily into a PDF to reduce file size.

What to include in your portfolio

The work in your portfolio can be produced as part of a formal course of study or evening class, or anything you have produced independently.

We do not necessarily expect to see finished fashion and textile pieces, but all work should be well-presented. It would be advisable if this were a selection of your most recent work but not necessarily all from one project. We want to see images from your workbooks and sheets of developmental work.

Please include the following types of images. Add a short description for each. If they were produced in response to a brief, provide a description of this.

Ten images of sketchbook work

Please include experimental examples, research from a variety of sources, material experimentation, drawing in a variety of styles and use of a range of media types.

Five images of design ideas and design development

This can include some completed pieces. Please include images of workbook pages that relate directly to one of your examples of completed work. This should show your design process and working methodologies. For example, idea generation, design planning, visual experiments, sketches, observations and research into designers and artists.

What we're looking for

We are looking for your portfolio to demonstrate your:

Use of research in the development of your ideas
Material experimentation
Ability to draw in a variety of styles
Design ideas and design development
Understanding of fashion and textile design as a subject and its wider social and global context
Ability to reflect on what is, and is not, successful about your work
Interest in the history of art, contemporary culture, critical theory and media studies
Enthusiasm and commitment to study fashion and textile design at university level

Your portfolio should demonstrate evidence of: