They say that fashion demands an eye for style. If that’s the case, fashion marketing demands one eye on style, one on hard business and at least two more in the back of your head!

Others may create the garment but it is you, the creative marketer, the skilful strategist, who will turn it into the must-have, must-wear commodity. You may not be the creator but what we’ll teach you on our new Fashion Marketing course is an art in its own right.

We’ll teach you how to retail, brand and merchandise fashion. You’ll discover promotional and sales strategies, learning how to take a new fashion product from the concept stage all the way to the high street store.

You’ll do this in close collaboration with your fashion design and fashion textiles student colleagues at UEL. This is crucial for you to gain the clearest, broadest picture of an industry that, as marketers, you’ll need to understand inside out.

With a combination of theory-based and practical, creative modules, we’ll give you the ideal foundation to market fashion innovatively and effectively.

In the first of your three years – four if you take the optional year-long placement – you’ll explore key debates in today’s fashion business, such as industry ethics, as part of your introduction to marketing.

You’ll learn about the ‘four Ps’ of marketing – product, price, promotion, place – and put together a fashion magazine, both online and as a hard copy. This will also give you valuable experience in working on photo shoots.

In your next year, you’ll look at areas such as visual merchandising, show production, fashion promotion on film and campaign management. You’ll examine how social media works in relation to fashion.

All that you’ve learned will feed into a big final-year project of your choice. For example, you could bring your skills together to formulate a major marketing strategy for a new perfume brand.

You'll be taught by a range of staff, many of whom are practitioners in the area they teach. Some of the assessments focus on practical skills and are presented as ‘live or simulated briefs’. This ensures that the practice-led teaching is relevant to industry procedures. Our staff are well placed to take advantage of a range of professional networks and industry contacts. Each module is designed with practical components and a reflective component, with the intention that students develop an ability to comment on, justify and develop their creative process.

When not attending timetabled lectures or workshops, you will be expected to continue learning independently through self-study. This will typically involve skills development through online study; reading journal articles and books; working on individual and group projects and preparing coursework assignments and presentations. Your independent learning is supported by a range of excellent facilities including online resources, specialist facilities, such as edit suites, the library, the full Microsoft Office software, including Teams, and Moodle: our Virtual Learning Environment.

Our academic support team provides help in a range of areas – including learning, mental wellbeing and disability support.  

When you arrive, we'll introduce you to your personal tutor. This is the member of the academic course team who will provide academic guidance, be a support throughout your time at UEL and who will show you how to make the best use of all the help and resources that we offer.

Each year you will spend around 300 hours of timetabled learning and teaching activities. (i.e. approx. 150 hours per term, 12.5 hours per week 4.1 hours per module). These may be lectures, workshops, seminars and individual and group tutorials. Contact hours may vary depending on each module.  

The approximate percentages for this course are:
Year 1: scheduled teaching – 300 hours; guided independent study – 900 hours.
Year 2: scheduled teaching – 300 hours; guided independent study – 900 hours.
Year 3: scheduled teaching – 300 hours; guided independent study – 900 hours.

Your individualised timetable is normally available within 48 hours of enrolment. Whilst we make every effort to ensure timetables are as student-friendly as possible, scheduled teaching can take place on any day of the week between 9.00am and 6.00pm. For undergraduate students, Wednesday afternoons are normally reserved for sports and cultural activities, but there may be occasions when this is not possible. Timetables for part-time students will depend on the modules selected.

To give you an indication of class sizes, this course normally attracts 15–25 students a year. Lecture sizes are normally similar to this range. In the classroom you will also be taught in groups of a similar number. However, this can vary by academic year.