BA (Hons) Costume

All undergraduate courses at AUB offer an optional placement year, to be taken between your second and third years of study.

If you’re unsure about this optional placement, you don’t need to decide now. Once you’re here and studying with us, the course team will discuss the placement options with you, so when the time comes, you can make a decision that’s right for you.

Students on BA (Hons) Costume have the chance to broaden their horizons through exciting exchange and international summer programmes. These opportunities allow you to study abroad at one of our brilliant partner institutions, experience different cultures, and enhance your academic journey.

The focus at this level is introducing you to the fundamental skills and behaviours required for the professional costume practitioner and for conceptual thinking and experimentation to develop as core skills are mastered and refined.

You're introduced to key costume design and production skills. In the first unit, you'll undertake technical sewing, drawing and digital processes, script breakdown, fabric identification skills, and dye room techniques. This will be supported by garment research, and will culminate in the production of design work and a technical file that'll form the basis of the next unit.

In the second unit of study, you'll be introduced to further making and styling skills, and to the problem-solving required to realise a two-dimensional design into a three-dimensional costume. This requires an understanding of character analysis, design aesthetics and fabric selection. You'll realise costumes from given designs using a developing knowledge of cut and construction, surface decoration and fabric manipulation. Alongside this, you'll start to gain an identity as sustainable costume practitioners, through researching sustainability in costume practice. They'll also gain a more detailed understanding of the role of costume in industry with introductions to the different departments within BFS.

In the final unit, the focus is on costume for screen, working alongside other courses within BFS (BA (Hons) Acting, Creative Writing, Make-Up, Hair and Prosthetics, and Film Production) to create a film to a live brief, and with a professional production setup. This will be complemented by a small project exploring specialist technical skills for film for both designers and makers during the post-production period and image-based analytical research into costume for film.

You'll start by looking at how technology has, is and will be driving innovation in fashion; how fashion has influenced the evolution of technologies and the role of technology within the fashion economy. You'll then start to look at the business of fashion through the understanding and ethics of sustainable practices: ethical sourcing and Fair-Trade practices. This will be followed by an introduction to socially responsible consumer behaviour and marketing practices and the cultural and ethical perspectives of fashion and textiles history.

Your first year will conclude by looking at the fundamentals of garment construction and zero-waste design, digital tools for fashion, such as Adobe suite and CLO3D, digital prototyping and reduction of textile waste and an introduction to sustainable textiles and alternatives, such as organic, recycled, vegan and bio-fabricated.

The focus of Level 5 is to develop specialist knowledge for an area of the costume discipline, which is then applied in an industry context through a live production/film project and a career development portfolio. All units connect film and theatre learning by synthesising creative and technical skills in the design, making and supervision specialisms.

You're introduced to costumes that draw inspiration from historical contexts in the first unit, allowing you the chance to delve into object-based study and to develop your own creative responses to particular historical period. You'll refine the technical skills learnt in Level 4 to include more sophisticated design realisations, pattern cutting and construction, styling and fabric sourcing for projects that draw inspiration from historical texts.

In the second term of Level 5, you're offered the opportunity to work on either a film or a live production. Working in collaboration with your peers from other courses across BFS, and gaining a certain measure of supported independence on a live project, will set you up to take on your own projects in Level 6, and give you the opportunity to articulate your ideas through your preferred professional contexts.

Alongside these two units runs a Career Development Portfolio, which prioritises the cultivation of graduate attributes, including critical thinking, teamwork and independent problem solving alongside essential professional skills. You'll be offered the opportunity to choose from a suite of smaller projects, including ALBERT accreditation, personal promotional materials, software skills development, academic research, to tailor your skills to your desired career outcomes and fill in any skills gaps.

Towards the end of the year, part of the Career Development Portfolio will involve the opportunity for focused study in a specific area of your chosen discipline, including advanced making skills such as tailoring or millinery, the development of an ALBERT project, or speculative production design for a forthcoming live show.

In the final year, you'll have the opportunity to work in a live, collaborative context on costume projects. You're encouraged to focus on one specialism but to explore different roles within that, to situate you for an employment context.

The final year requires you to define the direction of your practice for the remainder of your studies. You're encouraged to refine your interpersonal skills and professional behaviours in a way that reflects industry expectations. The focus is on creating a professional portfolio of work in preparation for employment of further study, and you'll create your own Learning Agreements based on a selection of projects that'll provide you with a distinctive skill set in a competitive field. Opportunities are provided for the diverse range of roles graduates work in, including costume designers, makers and supervisors for theatre, film and TV; costume illustrators, dressers, running wardrobe, and film dailies. In addition, there may be the opportunities for these transferrable skills to be applied beyond the media and performance industries to a wide range of projects that could include teaching and educational workshops, marketing campaigns, arts administration, event production and museum curation.

The Research Projects unit completes your study – you'll conduct independent research on a topic relevant to your practice. This can take the form of an industry report or research file related to your Major Project, or for anyone interested in further study, a more traditional dissertation format.