Costume Design and Construction
Costume design and construction occupies a distinctive place in the performing arts, combining deep creative vision with exacting technical craft. A skilled costume professional translates a director's or designer's intentions into physical garments that communicate character, period, status, and mood to an audience, while withstanding the demands of performance night after night. The discipline draws on fashion history, textile knowledge, pattern cutting and tailoring, and an understanding of how costume functions within the broader visual and dramatic world of a production.
This three-year specialist programme at Nottingham Trent University develops both your design and construction skills in depth. You will learn how to translate creative ideas into professional costumes for theatre, film, television, dance, opera, and other performance contexts, working across the full range of relevant technical skills. These include corsetry, pattern cutting, draping, tailoring, millinery, costume props, fabric knowledge, textile breaking-down, print and dye techniques, and emerging technologies that are reshaping production practice.
The programme aims to create future-facing professionals who are industry-relevant, capable of working collaboratively within multi-disciplinary production teams, and confident as autonomous practitioners.
Graduates work in theatre, film, television, opera, dance, and large-scale live events in roles as costume designers, costume supervisors, costume makers, wardrobe managers, and textile specialists. The technical expertise developed in the programme is also applicable to historical costume reproduction, museum and heritage collections, and specialist craft roles in the film and TV industries. Many graduates work as freelancers across multiple production contexts, building careers that combine design creativity with technical excellence.
Further study at postgraduate level is available for those who want to develop a research practice or specialise more deeply in design or production.