Fashion, Marketing and Communication

Fashion, marketing, and communication sits at the intersection of one of the world's most globally significant creative industries and the disciplines that allow it to connect with consumers and audiences. Fashion is not simply about clothing: it is a complex cultural, economic, and social phenomenon that intersects with identity, sustainability, technology, and global supply chains. Marketing and communication give you the frameworks and skills to understand how fashion brands build relationships with their audiences, how campaigns are conceived and executed, and how the language of style is communicated across platforms.

At the University of Derby, this programme combines creative and practical study to develop your fashion design skills alongside a thorough grounding in business, branding, and communication. This is a programme that includes a foundation year, a sandwich year in industry, a year abroad, and work placement opportunities, making it one of the most structured and experientially rich fashion programmes available. The foundation year gives you a solid grounding before the main degree begins.

The sandwich year places you within a real fashion or communications organisation, and the year abroad gives you direct exposure to fashion culture and business in another country. Work placements built throughout the programme mean you are developing professional experience from an early stage.

Derby's programme reflects an understanding that careers in fashion increasingly require a combination of creative skill, business acumen, and digital fluency, and the curriculum is designed to develop all three. The combination of creative and analytical teaching prepares graduates for the realities of working in a commercially competitive and fast-moving industry.

Graduates work in fashion brand management, digital marketing, retail management, fashion journalism and communications, styling, visual merchandising, and a wide range of roles across the fashion and creative industries. Postgraduate study in fashion management, marketing, or creative industries is a further option for those who wish to develop a specialism.