BFA in Studio Art: Fashion

Fashion

The Fashion concentration in the Studio Art program invites you to reimagine what fashion can be—creatively, ethically, and socially. You’ll dive into a wide range of subjects, from apparel construction and textile design to fashion history, identity, social psychology, and sustainable practices.

You’ll learn how to design garments with intention, studying fabric and form while developing your own design process through research, sketching, ideation, and illustration. Courses in materiality, textile properties, pattern making, and construction give you the technical foundation to bring your concepts to life.

As you progress, you’ll explore how fashion intersects with culture, community, and the environment. Our curriculum emphasizes sustainability and introduces students to the full scope of the fashion ecosystem, from design and manufacturing to branding, promotion, and sales.

Situated within the interdisciplinary Studio Art program, Fashion students can expand their practice through electives in fiber and soft sculpture, illustration, photography, video, and special topics. You’ll be encouraged to build a creative path that reflects your own vision, passions, and values.

Our well-equipped studios include resources for sewing, embroidery (digital and traditional), crochet, weaving, textile printing, and advanced digital tools like 3D printers, laser cutters, and digital imaging and printing.

At Illinois, fashion connects with a larger world. You’ll have opportunities to collaborate across campus with researchers and makers in Sustainability, Design, Theatre, Psychology, Business, Journalism, Gender and Women’s Studies, and more.

Whether you want to disrupt the industry or design for local impact, Fashion at Illinois helps you build the skills, knowledge, and confidence to imagine—and create—what comes next.

Studio facilities include a variety of classrooms and shops well equipped to explore textile manipulation and representation including sewing, embroidery (digital and traditional) traditional), crochet, weaving, textile printing, digital output technologies including 3D printers, water jet and laser cutting, and digital imaging and printing.

Students studying fashion at the U of I are uniquely situated to bridge divides and engage practitioners at the top of their fields across many areas of research, including but not limited to Sustainability, Studio, Design, Theatre, Sociology, Psychology, Business, Journalism, and Gender and Women’s Studies. They receive a solid academic foundation from which to build their practice of design and making.