Portfolio advice for MA Creative Direction for Fashion applicants

Portfolio Requirements

For the MA Creative Direction for Fashion course you’ll be able to upload your portfolio via the UCA Applicant Portal.  

You should submit a 30 page portfolio that demonstrates strong conceptual thinking and an interest in fashion communication, visual culture and creative leadership. Your portfolio may include image making, styling, art direction, branding concepts, campaigns, publications, exhibitions or interdisciplinary projects. Work does not need to be commercially resolved, but it should clearly show your thinking, research and ability to develop ideas into coherent visual strategies.

Applicants from a wide range of creative backgrounds are welcome. Your portfolio should clearly communicate how your previous experience connects to creative direction and how you approach ideas critically and strategically.

We encourage applicants to prioritise clarity, intent and originality over quantity, focusing on a small selection of projects that demonstrate ambition and potential.

As part of your portfolio, you should include a 500 word project proposal. This should outline the area of practice you are interested in developing on the course and demonstrate how your ideas connect to relevant historical, contemporary and cultural contexts. Your proposal should include:

• the background and motivations informing your interests
• the focus or questions you wish to explore through your practice
• the critical, theoretical or cultural references that inform your thinking
• the methods, processes or approaches you anticipate using

The proposal will help us assess how you think, research and develop ideas for postgraduate studies.

Use of AI 

Your portfolio must contain your own work. We understand that some of your portfolio may include work created in part or whole by AI. You must acknowledge this by adding ‘AI generated’ to the relevant section(s), stating how you used AI to create images, and adding a link to the original image with the date it was created (where possible).