-Fashion-Media-&-promotion,-UCA-Rochester.jpg "Sharon Obot-Golden, BA (Hons) Fashion Media & promotion, UCA Rochester")
Fashion Image & Styling BA (Hons)
Epsom
Course overview
UCA’s BA (Hons) Fashion Image and Styling degree course will help make you a key player in the fashion industry, able to create looks and concepts for every scenario – from the movies and the red carpet to the High Street and magazines.
Fashion image experts and stylists are at the front line of the fashion industry, working across fashion shoots and celebrity events, and even with social media influencers. This course will teach you everything you need to know to enter any area of the industry – whether it’s fashion styling, fashion film, fashion illustration or curation.
Throughout the course, you’ll explore the often unseen role of fashion image creators and learn how to tackle any brief – from styling a fashion show to creating an Instagram series, directing a pop video or even leading an entire creative team towards a common goal.
Along the way, you’ll benefit from a wealth of industry expertise, make use of our extensive fashion facilities, and develop in-depth skills in styling, film and photography, image-making, event and show curation and even virtual concept-building.
Our students have gone on to work in events and creative direction at M&S and Gucci, styling at i-D Magazine and Net-a-Porter, and even presenting and hosting fashion events in London, New York and Milan.
You have the option to complete a Professional Practice Year as part of this course. This will give you the opportunity to develop your professional, academic and personal potential, equipping you to be confident and engaged in creative workplaces. Employers widely recognise these qualities, and a significant proportion of placement students are offered graduate-level jobs or go onto postgraduate study.
Please note - this course is subject to updating and will be moving from UCA Rochester to UCA Epsom for 2022 entry.
Our standard three year undergraduate degree for those who meet the entry requirements for higher education.
UCAS Code for 3 year/standard: W239
A four year degree programme, including a foundation year to help develop your creativity before you embark on year one of a degree.
UCAS Code for course with Integrated Foundation Year: W23K
A four year course, specifically designed to provide international students with the English language and creative skills before they embark on year one of a degree.
UCAS Code for course with Integrated International Foundation Year: W23L
A four year programme, which sees you spend an entire year gaining valuable industry experience prior to your final year of study.
UCAS Code for course with Professional Practice: W241
A five year course, including a foundation year to help develop your creativity before you embark on year one of a degree, and a year on a professional placement gaining valuable industry experience prior to your final year of study.
UCAS Code for course with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year: W23M
A five year course, including an international foundation year concentrating on English language and core creative skills before you embark on year one of a degree, and a year on a professional placement gaining valuable industry experience prior to your final year of study.
UCAS Code for course with International Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year: W23N
Course Details
UCA’s Integrated Foundation Year is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and more.
You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree.
For our students coming from a non-UK educational background, UCA has an Integrated International Foundation Year to bring students from around the world to one hub of creativity. This is based at UCA Epsom and delivered by UCAIC.
This year of preparatory study is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and the English speaking and writing skills you’ll need to succeed.
You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree.
The first year of your course gives you an introduction to the various elements of fashion imaging and styling. You’ll also start to build your portfolio.
Launch
The Launch week is an inter-disciplinary Industry Guest Speakers’ Series offered to all students across the School of Fashion & Textiles. Guest speakers with diverse backgrounds, skills and career paths representing the diversity of our student community will inspire you to kick-start your thinking about your own career journey.
Fashion Image Making
This first unit looks at fashion and image and how fashion trends and products are communicated to an audience. You’ll examine the role of culture within the fashion industry and learn about influential image makers and techniques. As part of this unit you’ll also begin your research practice, and make a start on your Personal Development Planning as you began to contextualise your practice within the industry.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
The unit provides an opportunity for students to explore what is meant by equality, diversity, and inclusion and the implications of these concepts for creative practice. It will equip students to understand how our social identities (such as, gender, race/ethnicity, class, disability, sexual orientation, and religion) contribute to the inclusion and/or exclusion of individuals in creative spaces.
Showcase
This is a short, sharp and exciting project where your skills in decision-making, fast reflexes and concise communication in the curation, exhibition and promotion of a fashion image. You’ll work individually, and as a group, and have the opportunity to liaise with professionals. You’ll select your best fashion image from the previous unit, rework and redesign for print and digital, and finally promote, exhibit and evaluate – all in a 4-week period.
ATOM Activities
ATOM activities are tiny pieces of individual learning that help you collaborate with others at UCA and, while a small fraction of your curriculum, give you an opportunity to broaden your horizons.
Hackathon
You’ll work across the School of Fashion & Textiles on a week-long project brief. This is an opportunity to work as part of a multi-disciplinary team and get your hands on a piece of software or equipment to familiarise yourself with the technology that is becoming ubiquitous in the industry. For instance, you may be asked to design a website, an Instagram filter, an avatar, a virtual garment or digital prints to name but a few possibilities.
Fashion Styling & Creative Direction
Extend your knowledge of creative fashion styling, fashioned identity and image creation both from a theoretical and practical perspective. You’ll learn how stylists and creative directors use style in order to define and represent an identity through media, and then generate style images for a specified publication to explore these ideas.
Portfolio and Personal Development Planning (PDP)
You’ll learn how to curate and build a digital portfolio – your first step in placing your own practice in an industry context. You’ll also create an enhancement project to boost your portfolio – this is extra-curricular and may take the form of work experience, an individual or collaborative project or a competition entry. You’ll reflect on your PDP development.
Your second year will see you develop your skills as you begin to take more creative decisions and work on independent projects. You’ll also have the opportunity to undertake a work placement, as well as an optional study abroad exchange.
ATOM Activities
ATOM activities are tiny pieces of individual learning that help you collaborate with others at UCA and, while a small fraction of your curriculum, give you an opportunity to broaden your horizons.
Launch week
This intensive, interactive career preparation week builds upon your Year 1 work, preparing you for your work placement, focused on your CV and covert letter preparation, personal branding on professional social networks, networking and interview preparation.
Fashion in Motion
This unit is about applying your understanding of, and creative responses to, the requirements of the fashion industry in 360-degree moving image; film, animation or capturing live performance. You will need to define and analyse a client of your choice, and respond with a short creative film, animation or documentary of a live event, which takes fashion image making and styling to the highest level.
Equality Diversity and Inclusivity 2
This unit aims to promote progressive values and attitudes to diversity and inclusion in creative practice. Students will have the opportunity to explore global perspectives and influences on creative practice, drawing upon interactions with varied identities, cultures, politics, and histories. The unit will explore how beliefs, values and attitudes drive behaviour and practices.
Product Styling and e-Commerce (elective)
In the fast-paced world of e-commerce, product imagery and styling are a crucial tool in driving sales. This short-sharp portfolio-enhancing unit focuses on the employable practicalities of styling for e-commerce with a focus on clarity, planning and documentation to give you a strong skill and knowledge base in this competitive and exciting facet of the industry. You’ll produce a range of e-commerce shots and accompanying documentation for a specified brand and product of your choice.
Bespoke Styling for Celebrity (elective)
In the constant whirl of celebrity appearances, relationships between stylists and celebrities is based on networks, trust and clarity of purpose. In this unit you will research a celebrity of your choice, contextualise their audience and ‘message’, and propose an innovative, bespoke wardrobe for a series of specified appearances in conjunction with relevant designers and makers.
Opportunity Week
Have you ever watched Dragon’s Den on the BBC? Have you ever dreamed of being one of the contestants? Have you got a business idea? Now is your chance to become the next big fashion & textiles entrepreneur. Students will work in multi-disciplinary teams to prepare a short business plan, a prototype and pitch their ideas to a panel of industry judges.
Digital Content Creation
This unit builds on contextualising your own practice in industry. Your research, analysis and deep understanding of your own practice and current industry needs will inform your exploration and experimentation in applying your skills in communication and storytelling. You will investigate, propose and create a multifaceted digital content campaign that will promote a brand, product or service across a number of media platforms with a consistent message and tone appropriate to your ‘client’.
Portfolio & PDP
Advancing from your first year you’ll make a new digital portfolio that reflects your level of study. You’ll also create an enhancement project to boost your portfolio – this is extra-curricular and may take the form of work experience, an individual or collaborative project or a competition entry, and you’ll reflect on your PDP development.
Placement
This unit is about gaining direct, insider understanding of the marketplace and your role within it. The unit will begin to prepare you for your future, professional entry into industry and focuses on the practices and principles of the creative industries surrounding fashion image-making & styling. Your placement should be a minimum of 15-20 days, but as it is at the end of the academic year this opens up the opportunity for you to continue your placement into the summer break, after assessment has taken place.
If you opt to complete a professional practice year, this will take place in year three. You will undertake a placement within the creative industries to further develop your skills and CV.
While on your Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee for that year. This fee will be determined using government funding regulations. Based on current regulations, we expect this to be a maximum of 20% of the tuition fee rate that you are charged for your second year of study. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during this year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this as you approach your Professional Practice Year.
Please note: If you are an international applicant, you will need to enrol onto the course ‘with Professional Practice Year’. It will not be possible to transfer onto the Professional Practice Year after enrolment
In your final year you’ll produce your final project and an illustrated thesis.
Launch week
The Launch week is a project pitch week. This is your opportunity to share ideas that you will have developed over the summer about your degree project, receive feedback and finetune it before you start actively working on it as part of your last year at university.
Innovation for Industry
In a saturated market, how we communicate and present our concepts for innovation in fashion imagery is crucial to successful visual communication and, ultimately, relevance and longevity for both ourselves and our clients. In this unit, we will introduce you to a client who will set a research question that is relevant to current industry practice. Using the research question as a starting point, you’ll take a broader view of what you determine to be the definition of ‘innovation’ in response to the client brief and also to your own developing portfolio, specialist skills and practice.
Critical Thinking for Publication
Following on from your Academic Proposal (completed at the end of Year 2), and your Year 2>3 Summer Project, you will now refine your aims and come to a conclusion in the Critical Thinking for Publication Unit. You will define your angle or argument, and communicate this through creative content for a specified platform or publication. The creative outcome will be supported by a research document in which you reflect on your learning journey. You will evidence the growth of the argument and contextualise the topic within the global fashion industry.
Opportunity Week
The Graduate Career Fair taking place during the first week of your second term supports your job search as you prepare to leave University. Companies that are actively hiring in your sector are invited to present to give you information about them, the kind of candidates they are looking for and their hiring process.
Creative Direction for Fashion
For your final project on the course, you are expected to create a substantial project that focuses on your area of professional interest and showcases your specialist skills. This work may take a variety of forms – from a body of editorial work within a publication to a series of films. You’ll also compile your graduate portfolio and a promotional showcase.
This course offers the opportunity to study abroad for part of your second year. To find out more about studying abroad as part of your course please see the Study Abroad section:
Tuition fees
The course fees per year for 2022 entry will be available here shortly.
As a guide the fees for 2021 entry are:
- UK students - £9,250
- EU students - £9,250 (see fee discount information)
- International students - £16,950 (standard fee)
- International students - £16,270 (full early payment fee)
If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee for that year. This fee will be set by the government in their funding regulations. Based on current regulations, we expect this to be a maximum of 20% of the tuition fee rate that you will be charged for your second year of study. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.
Additional course costs
In addition to the tuition fees please see the additional course costs which will be available here shortly.
Further information
Find out more about our course fees and any financial support you may be entitled to:
These fees are correct for the stated academic year only. Costs may increase each year during a student’s period of continued registration on course in line with inflation (subject to any maximum regulated tuition fee limit). Any adjustment for continuing students will be at or below the RPI-X forecast rate.
Course specifications
Please note, syllabus content indicated is provided as a guide. The content of the course may be subject to change in line with our Student Terms and Conditions for example, as required by external professional bodies or to improve the quality of the course.
Facilities
The course has access to the campus printmaking workshops with dedicated technical support, campus photographic studios with lighting rigs, green screen lighting set up and digital media suites equipped with Macs and PCs, programmed with specialist design software.
Photography studios, UCA Epsom
Print studios, UCA Epsom
Digital suite, UCA Epsom
Library, UCA Epsom
Course connections
Live projects
You’ll have the opportunity to take part in live industry projects collaborating with fashion giants including Harvey Nichols, Shaftesbury PLC, Covent Garden, Carnaby Street, Camden Town and Zandra Rhodes.
Student Placements
Student placements are mandatory in the second year. Past students have undertaken placements at Gucci, Vogue, Preen, London Fashion Week and Wonderland Magazine.
Our graduates work in areas as diverse as:
- Styling
- Public relations
- Marketing
- Digital marketing
- Copywriting.
Recent graduates’ positions demonstrate a dazzling array of career opportunities, such as:
- Social media manager
- PR coordinator
- Digital account executive
- Digital marketing assistant
- Marketing assistant
- Junior account executive
- Communications coordinator
- Communications assistant
- Marketing communications manager
- Fashion assistant
- Online coordinator.
In addition, a number of graduates have created their own career and business opportunities through freelance editorial styling, journalism, and boutique PR and marketing.
You may also like to consider further study at postgraduate level.
Visit our 2021 grad show site to see the incredible work created by our graduating students
Visit the 2021 Gradshow
"The course offers an extraordinarily broad insight into the fashion industry, which has helped me significantly in developing my abilities, including photography, filmmaking, and a wide range of writing and digital media skills"
Entry requirements
BA (Hons) course
BA (Hons) course with Professional Practice Year
The standard entry requirements* for these courses are one of the following:
- 112 new UCAS tariff points, see accepted qualifications
- Pass at Foundation Diploma in Art & Design (Level 3 or 4)
- Distinction, Merit, Merit at BTEC Extended Diploma / BTEC National Extended Diploma
- Merit at UAL Extended Diploma
- 112 new UCAS tariff points from an accredited Access to Higher Education Diploma in appropriate subject
- 27-30 total points in the International Baccalaureate Diploma with at least 15 IB points at Higher level, see more information about IB entry requirements.
And four GCSE passes at grade A*-C and/or grade 4-9 including English (or Functional Skills English/Key Skills Communication Level 2).
Other relevant and equivalent Level 3 UK and international qualifications are considered on an individual basis, and we encourage students from diverse educational backgrounds to apply.
BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
The standard entry requirements for these courses are one of the following:
- 64 new UCAS tariff points, see accepted qualifications
- Pass at Foundation Diploma in Art & Design (Level 3 or 4)
- Merit, Pass, Pass at BTEC Extended Diploma / BTEC National Extended Diploma
- Pass at UAL Extended Diploma
- 64 new UCAS tariff points from an accredited Access to Higher Education Diploma in appropriate subject
- 24 points from the International Baccalaureate, see more information about IB entry requirements.
And four GCSE passes at grade A*-C and/or grade 4-9 including English (or Functional Skills English/Key Skills Communication Level 2).
Other relevant and equivalent Level 3 UK and international qualifications are considered on an individual basis, and we encourage students from diverse educational backgrounds to apply.
BA (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
For these courses you need to have completed 12 years* of schooling (with good grades) and show strong evidence of your ability to successfully complete the programme and progress onto your chosen degree.
*We occasionally make offers which are lower than the standard entry criteria, to students who have faced difficulties that have affected their performance and who were expected to achieve higher results. We consider the strength of our applicants’ portfolios, as well as their grades - in these cases, a strong portfolio is especially important.
To view the equivalent entry requirements for your country please select it in the list below.
Don't meet the international entry requirements or English language requirements?
You may be able to enter the course through the following entry courses:
Pre-sessional English courses in the UK or China
BA (Hons) course
BA (Hons) course with Professional Practice Year
For these courses, we’ll need to see your portfolio for review. We’ll invite you to attend an Applicant Day so you can have your portfolio review in person, meet the course team and learn more about your course. If you would prefer to upload a portfolio digitally, there is also the option to submit it online via your UCA Applicant Portal. Further information will be provided once you have applied.
BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
These courses don't require a portfolio. If you receive an offer, you’ll be invited to attend an Applicant Day where you can meet the course team and learn more about the course.
BA (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
These courses don't require a portfolio. If you receive an offer, you’ll be invited to attend an Applicant Day where you can meet the course team and learn more about the course.
Apply Now
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UCAS Institution
C93
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UCAS Code for 3 year/standard
W239
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UCAS Code for course with Professional Practice
W241
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UCAS Code for course with Integrated Foundation Year
W23K
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UCAS Code for course with Integrated International Foundation Year
W23L
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UCAS Code for course with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
W23M
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UCAS Code for course with Integrated International Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
W23N
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