Justice-Focused Practice
Students’ learning is guided by a commitment to social justice, decolonization, and environmental sustainability. You learn to disrupt hierarchies, colonial systems, and outmoded beauty ideals and body standards, while discovering and reclaiming ethically robust forms of learning and creative expression that foster more just relationships among people and with the world.
Inclusive Approaches
Our work addresses all dimensions of the fashion system. Students develop innovative strategies and design solutions that center the needs and desires of all identities, including plus-size people, people with disabilities, and queer, trans, and non-binary individuals and those of all gender expressions. This approach encourages students to examine social, theoretical, and contextual applications of fashion design, textiles, and management and communication and to challenge fashion’s dominant perceptions and practices, viewing them through their own unique lens.
Research, Theory, and Practice
Our programs are grounded in research-led processes and a critical understanding of the emotional, sociocultural, and environmental dimensions of fashion as well as the global fashion industry’s impact on the environment, society, and business. Students are challenged to engage in transdisciplinary collaboration with other fields of study and students across the school and the university.
Learning from Industry Leaders
The School of Fashion organizes curricular partnerships with fashion companies including Kering, Tory Burch, Ganni, Mara Hoffman, Louis Vuitton, Swarovski, UNIQLO, and Woolmark and organizations such as Special Olympics, the United Nations, Goodwill, and the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Our network of alumni and industry innovators, such as Olivier Rousteing, Casey Cadwallader, Tory Burch, Ralph Lauren, Yohji Yamamoto, and Diane von Furstenberg, are actively involved in the programs.
Craft and Technology
Students are encouraged to explore the intersection of craft methodologies and digital technology to develop a range of future-facing fashion products, services, and systems. Courses are designed to help students develop new possibilities for fashion design, textile design, and business that employ technology to support more regenerative practices. Design students explore emerging areas of digital fashion design, ancestral textile practices, and new fabrication techniques while business students study the impact of data on industry practice, including product development, local and global production, and supply chain strategies.
NYC: Access to a Global Fashion Center
The dynamic culture of New York City enriches your learning through the diverse perspectives and creative networks it offers you access to. Internships with brands including LVMH, The Row, Issey Miyake, Vogue, Maison Margiela, and Marc Jacobs enable you to apply your learning and expose you to new industry sectors. After graduation, alumni go on to positions at Bode, Burberry, The Row, Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs, Nike, Theory, Thom Browne, Proenza Schouler, UNIQLO, and many other important firms.