Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Fashion Styling and Visual Merchandising Istituto Marangoni, UK

The Fashion Styling and Visual Merchandising course is part of the Fashion Styling study pathways, focusing on visual merchandising as the core subject. The course is designed to enhance and curate individual styles and create polished yet contemporary creative outcomes via multiple media. The course challenges the intersection between fashion, communication and innovation and seeks to drive meaningful change in the discipline through informed, researched, and detailed proposals combined with an intuitive vision, solid communication design, and a creative strategy.

The programme enables an in-depth immersion into industry practice, both in terms of simulated scenarios and real projects, where practical skills are gained, planning and organising fashion-based content, and exploring the fashion network on a global scale. The course also introduces the journey of an informed circular economy and ethical practices with regards to design, production, printing, and more. The outputs gained from this course are generated using both analogue and digital formats and supported by an extensive research methodology for each output.

The Fashion Styling and Visual Merchandising pathway starts in Level 5 Term 2, enabling the combination of creative skills with business acumen applied to a variety of industry-inspired innovative fashion concepts and outcomes. The course covers the basics of display dynamics, styling, outfit building, and creating core looks to engage the fashion consumer and generate sales. Topics such as store layout, lighting, fixtures, window presentations, graphic design, in-store displays, and overall store environment are covered, as well as in-store layout functions, fixture and fitting styles, mannequins and forms, and display installations.

The course also covers graphics and digital design skills to enhance visual concepts and their delivery, with a focus on gaining insight into business strategies and proposing concepts professionally. The course offers an opportunity to look into the future of the fashion industry, both offline and online, interrogating retail business strategies, the role of the buyer, fashion communication, branding, and analyzing new retail concepts, consumer behavior and current retail models through Omni channels. The programme concludes with a self-directed approach to research, development, and realization of a final major concept presented in a digital portfolio format.