Fashion Design Degree
Bachelor of Fine Arts
"*" indicates required fields
Your Runway to Success
Fashion is art, and you are the artist. The canvas is a world full of people looking for the right fit, color, and style for every occasion. Explore your creativity, express your artistic vision through fashion, and share your unique style with the world. The right fashion design school can be what puts you on the path to that beautiful thing that happens when a career and a passion come together.
Fashion Design Program Overview
As a student in the Fashion Design degree program, you’ll develop your own exceptional portfolio while learning innovative techniques to create unique designs. Essentials of trend forecasting, target market analysis, merchandising, concept development, color and fabric stories, textile design, CAD design, fashion illustration, color theory, and fashion show production are taught with the latest methodologies to prepare you to enter the exciting and creative field of fashion. The degree in fashion design program allows for adaptability in an ever-evolving industry from offering a sustainability emphasis to the latest technology. Our small classes provide an opportunity for one-on-one mentorship and tutoring with industry-experienced fashion designing degree instructors.
You’ll graduate with strong visual communication and design presentation skills, and the ability to develop a concept into a collection unique to your own artistic vision!
Fashion Design Program Highlights
Fashion Illustration
Students explore a range of materials and processes to develop a personal visual communication style and personality. Drawing, illustration and presentation techniques are developed to convey design ideas, fabric textures, prints and patterns and construction details on fashion flats, floats and figures.
Draping + Patternmaking
Students learn to explore creative dimensional forms in relationship to the body through manual and digital patternmaking, draping, construction and production techniques to successfully actualize garment designs.
Textiles + Materiality
Students explore and ideate textile strategies through conceptual and experimental frameworks related to structure and form, colors and patterns, materials and surfaces, environment, and community.
CAD Design
Students learn current and industry appropriate technologies to present concepts and illustrated designs, including production and manufacturing elements such as digital sewing and pattern-making, technical packages, grading, and 3D virtual fittings.
Sustainable Design Thinking
Students demonstrate conscious and sustainable research and diverse design thinking that relates to a broader cultural, socio-economic, historical, and environmental context.
Product Development + Management
Students articulate creative strategies and communicate design ideas professionally through verbal, written, visual, and digital methodologies, while developing business skills to position students as leaders in the fashion industry.
Liberal Arts
The Liberal Arts curriculum is an exciting part of every student’s academic and creative journey at RMCAD. These courses provide the opportunity for students to engage with complex questions and ideas to develop critical thinking skills, a global consciousness, and awareness of art historical foundations that are essential for their intellectual, creative, and personal growth.
Global Consciousness
The curious engagement with communities, perspectives, and narratives that do not match our own offers the opportunity to see one’s personal and creative role in our local, national, and global communities.
Critical Awareness
The willingness to ask questions and resist easy answers & simplistic dualities offers the opportunity to more clearly understand the complexity and multifaceted reality of history, creativity, and human communities.
Information Literacy
The ability to read closely, critique freely, and seek additional verifiable information offers the opportunity to more holistically discern the veracity of the information that inundates our lives.
Fashion Design Degree Requirements
RMCAD’s fashion designer degree curriculum was created to mesh the elements of form and function in fashion design with key business, fashion entrepreneurship, communication skills, state-of-the-industry technology, and focus on turning your artistic vision into a unique and innovative portfolio.
* RMCAD offers classes year-round in both on-campus and online delivery formats. At RMCAD, we believe that online learning is an important part of the overall college learning experience. To provide students multiple scheduling options, diverse learning modalities, and experience in the virtual environment, all on-campus students are required to take part in online education.
Tech + Tools
RMCAD’s Fashion Design degree program features a comprehensive curriculum and provides students the opportunity to cultivate fashion fluency, an integrated approach to express creativity, and hone technical skills through creative draping and patternmaking approaches and computer-aided fashion design illustration using 3D fashion design software. All while using the culture of fashion with a global context and impact. You will learn the relevance of issues impacting the fashion industry, from social justice and diversity to ethical fashion practices and their environmental impact in order to expand diverse voices, visions and solutions.
Required Equipment
Students in RMCAD’s on-campus Fashion Design degree program will be charged a one-time mandatory equipment fee of $1650.00 in their first academic year. Below is the provided equipment that will be yours to keep:
- Juki DDL-8700 High-speed Single Needle Straight Lockstitch Industrial Sewing Machine
- Professional Female Dress Form with Collapsible Shoulders and Removable Arms
While in fashion designer degree courses, you will also be required to purchase an iPad, Apple Pencil and the apps required for specific classes.
Fashion Design Careers
As the world evolves, so does fashion, which provides many options for your future. A RMCAD Fashion Design Degree doesn’t leave you with one path to success, it gives you choices! Our graduates have the opportunity to launch exciting careers in the following areas.
Potential Career Paths
- Fashion Design
- Technical Design
- CAD Design
- Textile Design
- Fabric + Trim Sourcing
- Patternmaking + Draping
- Production
- Product Development
- Fashion Styling
- Fashion Trend Forecasting
- Custom + Sample Sewing
WHY WAIT? APPLY NOW
Student Work + Success
Stories @ RMCAD
Global Tapestry of Fashion: Exploring Worldwide Style Trends
While many items of clothing are designed with practicality in mind, fashion design clothing patterns are meant to be symbolic. They represent who you are, where you are going and what you aspire to be. The right
Technology Meets Textiles: The Future of Fashion Design
The digital era has forced most industries to reflect on their own processes and products, ultimately requiring many to change and adapt to the times. The fashion industry is no exception, with industry thought leaders
From Concept to Catwalk: Fashion Show Theme Ideas
Fashion shows provide the ultimate opportunity to tell the fascinating and meaningful stories behind emerging styles. This is where designers showcase their latest creations while gaining extensive press coverage and exemplifying the creative power of
Fashion Design Faculty
You’ll be learning from faculty with a history of style and success in the world of fashion design. They’ve worked side-by-side with some of the best and brightest in the industry. As a RMCAD Fashion Design student, you can enjoy immersing yourself in that same well of knowledge and creativity.
Ready to Wear Your Creativity?
"*" indicates required fields