Program Overview

Digital Fashion MA

Ranked 1st in the world for Digital Fashion in The Rookies Global School Rankings 2024

Our groundbreaking MA Digital Fashion degree course at UCA Epsom catapults creative thinkers, designers, and entrepreneurs to the forefront of fashion’s intersection with emerging technologies, giving you the skills, understanding, and confidence to dress the future.

Taught by a team of industry pioneers and researchers, this course was the first of its kind when launched by UCA. Its unique position continues today with a cutting-edge interdisciplinary programme that spans the fields of fashion and gaming.

As fashion houses including Louis Vuitton, Moschino and Gucci style game characters and launch NFT collections, as AI sweeps the creative landscape and blurs lines between physical and digital, as new government legislation demands digital garment provenance for sustainability, and as fashion brands increasingly require 3D skills from their fashion designers, this course uniquely prepares creatives for both today and the future of manufacturing and self-expression.

Leveraging generative AI alongside traditional methods, you’ll create 3D garments in advanced contexts primed for a competitive market. You’ll enter a vibrant boundary-breaking environment where you and your peers dream up XR catwalk shows, user-customised sustainable fashion brands, genre-bending game skin launches, new responsive costume experiences in virtual concerts and cinema, or virtual influencers ready to go viral. Equipped with a strong core knowledge of fashion garment construction, the software behind emergent technologies such as Clo3D, Substance, and Unreal Engine, and an advanced critical understanding of the complex field, you'll emerge with the rare combination of skills to succeed in this high-demand market sector.

Our award-winning students further benefit from excellent industry connections and unique opportunities. Previous students have worked on live projects with brands including Farfetch, Epic Games, and The Fabricant, and have showcased their work across digital fashion week events of London, New York, Dubai, and the Metaverse. And with a small course cohort, your unique strengths and interests are heard and fostered.

Owing to the interdisciplinary nature of digital fashion, this course is open to a range of backgrounds including fashion, textiles, fashion business, games, animation, film, and graphic design – though if you come from a experience beyond fashion or 3D, you should expect to undertake intensive learning that will bring you up to speed.

Integrated Pre-Masters

We also offer this degree with an Integrated Pre-Masters course for international and UK students. The course prepares you for postgraduate study by improving your academic and creative skills before your degree begins.

Course entry options

• MA
• MA with Integrated Pre-Masters

Digital Fashion MA

A one-year course of advanced study for furthering your research skills and specialising within your discipline.

• Campus: Epsom
• Start date(s): September 2025, September 2026
• Duration: 1 year full-time
• Entry requirements:
  • Honours degree (or equivalent qualification) in the subject/related discipline
  • Relevant work experience

Digital Fashion MA with Integrated Pre-Masters

This course includes a year-long preparatory course of study to ready you for your Masters course, developing your specialist knowledge, research skills and confidence in working alone.

• Campus: Epsom
• Start date(s): September 2025, September 2026
• Duration: 2 years full-time
• Entry requirements:
  • A recognised bachelor degree or 3 year diploma with a strong portfolio in a relevant subject

What you'll study

• Integrated Pre-Masters (if undertaken)
  • Our Integrated Pre-Master's course will prepare for postgraduate study by improving your academic and creative skills before your degree begins.
  • You'll build a portfolio of work whilst you explore your subject specialism and benefit from personal development tutoring that will support your academic growth and help refine your specialism.
  • If you need to enhance your English language skills you can opt to join a pre-sessional English course to improve your IELTS score as well.
• Term one
  • Launch
    • Launch week is a cross-school event bringing together postgraduate students across all disciplines within the School of Fashion and Textiles to get to know each other and form an international, cross-functional, dynamic postgraduate community.
  • Digital Practice
    • With a self-negotiated individual project proposal developed over the course of this unit, you will analyse and reflect on your research ideas and pre-existing analogue and digital skills, in order to identify the digital fashion concept you wish to develop.
    • You will look at contemporary creative industry practice, trend forecasting and abstract concepts to explore how global markets and consumers might interact, identify with, and consume digital fashion.
    • The unit runs in parallel to Critical Thinking for Creative Practice unit, which focuses on contextualising practice within professional contexts, cultural, social and economic themes, through the development of critical reading, research and documenting.
  • Critical thinking for Creative Practice
    • Within this unit you will be introduced to historical and contemporary debates that underpin your creative practice.
    • You will be given the opportunity to expand your historical and contextual knowledge, examine ethical frameworks, and be introduced to social and cultural approaches to fashion and textiles.
• Term two
  • Opportunity Week
    • Opportunity Week is cross-school event bringing together all postgraduate students across all disciplines within fashion and textiles to formally present their work in progress and major project proposal to their postgraduate community.
    • Students will be encouraged to give formative feedback and identify shared interest and potential collaboration opportunities.
  • Project Development
    • You’ll use the knowledge you’ve already gained to support and inform the design and modification of your digital fashion concept and project proposal.
    • You start to build a body of work which must be appropriate for your selected market and target consumer.
  • Collaborative Professional Practice
    • Within this unit you will be introduced to markets, industry connections, contexts and future facing professional development within your discipline, in order to complete a two-stage collaborative professional project covering your planning and implementation.
• Term three
  • Project Realisation
    • The culmination of your studies, this unit will showcase your skills, understanding and creative approach in a way that’s appropriate to your intended audience, platform or creative sector.
    • Through your Project Proposal, Research Journal and the development of a Project Reflection Document, you will apply the knowledge gained through your research and the skills acquired in the previous units, on this programme, to create a final body of work presented as an industry ready portfolio.

Fees & funding

• UK: £10,500 (2025/26)
• EU: £10,500 (2025/26) (see fee discount information)
• International: £18,000 (2025/26) (MA), £17,500 (2025/26) (Integrated International Pre-Masters course - Sept & Jan), £8,750 (2025/26) (Integrated International Pre-Masters course - May)

Facilities & Equipment

• This course has studio spaces at The Wells - a new addition to complement our main campus and remodelled to specifically enhance students' learning experience.
• On campus there are also printing facilities and photographic studios with professional quality lighting rigs.

Career opportunities

• Graduates of this ground-breaking course might develop their career within a number of different roles:
  • Digital fashion designer
  • Digital textile designer
  • Digital fashion stylist
  • Fashion innovation entrepreneur or consultant
  • Character artist for film or games
  • 3D or VFX artist for film or games
  • Digital garment sampler
  • AR/VR designer
  • Virtual influencer manager
  • Fashion content creator
  • Digital conservator
  • 3D printed accessories designer
  • Insights analyst
  • AI Fashion Researcher
  • Social Media Executive
  • Digital Marketing and E-commerce Manager

Our Staff

• Michelle Marshall - Programme Director of Fashion Image
• Emily Rosa Shahaj - Lecturer, MA Digital Fashion
• Eshwar Nagilla - Technical Tutor in 3D Technologies

Entry & portfolio requirements

• For this course we will need to see your portfolio for review.
• You can either submit a digital portfolio or request an in-person portfolio review with the course team.

English Language Requirements

• View more information for students from various countries.

Postgraduate requirements

• View more information for students from various countries.

Integrated International Pre-Masters

• View more information for students from various countries.

English Language Requirements

• View more information for students from various countries.

IELTS requirements

• Master's Degree (MA/MSc/MFA/MBA/MArch/MMus): 6.5 overall with no less than 5.5 in any section
• Pre-Master's (13 Weeks): 6.0 overall with no less than 5.5 in any section
• Pre-Master's (30 Weeks): 5.5 overall with no less than 5.5 in any section