The Fashion Design programme encourages students
to develop their creative style and artistic vision while gaining essential technical, communication, and research skills.
In one-to-one and group tutorials, and through the artistic guidance of the internationally acclaimed fashion designers at
the helm of the department, students explore the critical potential of fashion between materiality, corporeality, and concept.
The
curriculum comprises traditional pattern cutting and construction skills alongside digital skills and techniques. Students
benefit from a state-of-the-art, industry-standard sewing atelier, knitting atelier and a spacious studio with a personal
work space for each student. Students are given the possibility to work in professionally equipped studio spaces and workshops
both within the Fashion Department and other departments of the University of Applied Arts.
In the diverse
range of lectures, seminars, and courses, students acquire design process, concept and presentation skills while learning
about historical and contemporary fashion and exploring the fashion system and its contexts. The curriculum provides training
in fashion drawing, technical drawing for fashion, fashion communication, fashion business, fashion history, and fashion theory.
The
Fashion Department initiates interdisciplinary collaborations within the University of Applied Arts and fosters co-operations
with partners across fashion, graphic design, photography, cultural studies, and visual arts. The Fashion Department has forged
strong alliances with companies that support the next generation of fashion talent in the development of their collections
and in projects revolving around materials and fabrics.
The unique curriculum at the Fashion Department is
not only distinguished by its personally-tailored education but also by its changing professorship at the head of the department,
which allows students to become familiar with different established positions within the fashion system. Since the early 1980s,
the department has been led by internationally renowned fashion designers such as, among others, Karl Lagerfeld, Helmut Lang,
Jil Sander, Raf Simons, Vivienne Westwood, Viktor & Rolf, Bernhard Willhelm, Hussein Chalayan, Lucie and Luke Meier, Grace
Wales Bonner, with Craig Green as current professor at the head of Fashion.
Graduates of the Fashion
Department have founded their own labels, such as Bless, house of the very island’s, Wendy Jim, Petar Petrov, Femme Maison,
Sagan Vienna, Kenneth Ize, and others. Others occupy leading positions in the fashion industry, working for brands such as
Balenciaga, Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, Lanvin, OAMC, Prada, Comme des Garçons or Maison
Margiela.
The next possible start to study fashion at the Fashion Department
is winter term 2025/26 (strts October 2025).
Each June, the Fashion Department organizes
one of Austria’s most talked-about and widely covered fashion shows, the Show Angewandte. Numerous prizes awarded at the show
testify to the notable artistic level of our students whose work is judged by an international jury of experts that also help
them to build networks.
