MA Fashion Cultures and Histories

MA Fashion Cultures and Histories offers students an opportunity to study cultures of fashion and dress through the lens of critical fashion history and theory. Students develop high-level writing, research and analytical skills to interrogate?fashion as global industry and bodily practice, preparing them to become informed critics and communicators generating innovative knowledge about fashion in its multiple contexts and shaping the ways it is understood.

Course overview

MA Fashion Cultures and Histories is a theory-based master’s degree that provides students with a cross-disciplinary foundation in relevant, innovative and critical fashion histories and theories. It provides unique opportunities for students to develop high-level writing, research, and analytical skills in interrogating fashion as global industry, media, dress, and bodily practice.

In responding to the developments in the media landscape and the need for socially, culturally and politically engaged professionals with theoretical and critical knowledge, the course aims to prepare researchers and critical innovators who can generate new thinking about fashion and help to shape the ways in which it is understood, presented and evaluated. In providing the tools for constructing compelling narratives about fashion for specialist and general audiences in multiple formats, the course prepares students for future-facing careers in research, publishing, education, museums, think tanks, institutes, within the fashion industry or to undertake further study in a fashion-related subject.

Career paths

Masters graduates have an acknowledged advantage in the employment market, obtaining work in a wide range of vocational and academic fields related to fashion. Previous graduates have gone on to lecture in related fields in Europe and America, worked in fashion curation and archives, journalism, styling, retail consultancy, as well as to higher level research degrees (MPhil or PhD). Our graduates are working within the industry at institutions including Museum of London, the V&A, BBC, Parsons, Kerry Taylor Auctions and Garde Robe, as well as for commercial brands such as Net-a-Porter and Burberry.

The standard entry requirements for this course are as follows: an Honours degree at 2.1 or above in a related discipline. Applicants with a degree in another subject may be considered, depending on the strength of the application OR equivalent qualifications.