Program Outline
Successful completion of AIU’s Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fashion Marketing and Design with a specialization in Fashion Marketing can help students learn the variety of functions and steps associated with getting fashion designs to the consumer.
You Can Learn How to:
- Demonstrate a comprehensive knowledge of the fashion industry, fashion marketing, its products, markets, consumers and marketing activities
- Demonstrate a confident understanding of key theoretical and other issues at the forefront of the fashion marketing industry
- Know how to promote your work professionally in the contemporary fashion marketplace and present work visually, verbally and through text, confidently employing current industry practices, including digital technologies
- Confidently engage in critical thinking, analysis, problem-solving, reflection and evaluation in relation to fashion marketing and your own and others’ work
- Independently apply ideas and knowledge creatively to generate ideas, concepts, proposals, solutions and reasoned arguments to a given or self-initiated brief
- Analyze and interpret trend and market information towards the creation of market ideas.
- Effectively self-manage, set goals, meet deadlines and anticipate and accommodate change in independent and team work
- Study the fashion industry, its products, markets, how consumer needs and characteristics affect areas such as production, management, sourcing, marketing and merchandising
- Evaluate the quality of design, materials and construction techniques that are used in commercially produced and hand-made textiles, apparel and accessories
- Present and promote design and marketing concepts
- Apply design and marketing skills to exploring material and developing ideas
- Generate concepts, proposals, solutions and arguments in response to design and marketing problems and self-initiated briefs
- Analyze and interpret trend and market information toward the creation of design ideas
Classes Overview
At AIU, more of the courses you take, on average, are devoted to your field of interest than at other similar schools. Your classes may include:
Fashion Buying
Fashion Buying presents buying practices and techniques, with an examination of consumer buying power, major market resources, governmental regulations and merchandise analysis. Through a simulated experience, students will conduct research and plan a six-moth seasonal dollar merchandise plan. A final product book will include all stages of development of the seasonal merchandise plan including trend forecasting, vendor negotiation and profitability analysis.
Fashion Branding
In Fashion Branding you will explore contemporary fashion brands and examine the strategies they use to create a unique personality, generate appeal and generally develop a "desirability factor" for potential consumers. This course will build directly on your skills and knowledge by deepening the understanding of the complexity of brands and branding, from conception and development, through to the management and marketing of the end products. The course will cover the development of values and ethics required to develop successful brands, as well as the creation of identity, revitalization and extension strategies. You will also explore the implications of changing environments for fashion consumers and fashion brands, and employ creative thinking, innovative problem solving and applied skills and methodologies to investigate and develop appropriate solutions to brand strategies.
CAD for Fashion Marketing
CAD for Fashion Marketing re-enforces the application of creative software (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.), to advance student's skills with computer applications used to enhance fashion presentations including color rendering of drawings and drafting of flats. Students will design a collection, and all the appropriate accoutrements that sit alongside the collection. Students will then take this work and develop and present it in a professional manner using the CAD skills learned in this class.
Strategic Fashion Marketing
Strategic Fashion Marketing gives students the opportunity to develop marketing strategies and tactics, from initial concept to finished proposal. Students will utilize elements of management leadership, critical thinking, problem-solving and creative skills to develop a strategic marketing initiative and implementation plan.
Visual Marketing
Effective retail display and space are essential elements of a fashion company's brand image. In this course, students study the key principles and techniques used globally in the retail environment. Students develop a capstone project that incorporates all aspects of store planning and design (e.g. exterior signing, interior signing, walls, floors, lighting, sound, merchandise, fixtures, mannequins, window displays and wall elevations). Visual merchandising in the e-tailing environment is also examined.
Final Fashion Marketing Project I
In Final Fashion Marketing Project I you have the opportunity to undertake a sustained period of self-directed research to employ all of your learning, to explore an area of interest to you. The area selected needs to be related to your studies of fashion marketing. You will be expected to work autonomously and to use tutor guidance to inform your work. You will work on an individual project. Group tutorials will enable you to learn from each other and gain mutual support.