Move beyond the traditional approaches to fashion design by incorporating technological innovation and new materials into your designs.

Fashion design is entering a new era. This shift is being driven by technological advances such as digital fabrication, embedded electronics, and intelligent, networked wearables. From lifestyle applications to medical uses, clothing can improve people’s lives, both environmentally and socially.

Learn to design and create clothing for fashion and fiction while exploring the intersections of digital and physical methodologies for the application of digital narratives, such as video games, animation and augmented reality.

Taking our Fashion Design Technology major, you’ll closely study the human body, pattern making, construction techniques, and the materials, software, and machinery used in the industry to produce physical and digital wearable items. You’ll look at clothing in wider contexts, including the history of fashion, ethical production practices, sustainability, and the evolving cultural trends and cutting-edge applications in fashion design. This predominantly studio-based subject also includes lectures, workshops, and group work.

While honing your craft with the latest software and digital equipment, you’ll learn to create workflows and work closely with lecturers and tutors through one-on-one mentorship and critique sessions. The University is positioned at the centre of New Zealand’s thriving cultural, creative, and innovation landscape. This brings a range of unique benefits, from guest speakers to industry pathways and possible work experience in the film industry and beyond.

You’ll gain cutting-edge skills based on emerging technologies that will prepare you for a variety of fashion design technology roles and to actively shape the future of this industry. The studies equip you to work in international digital workspaces in collaboration with interdisciplinary technical and creative teams to meet the increasing demand of clothing professionals in the digital industries.

You’ll have the opportunity to submit your creations to exhibitions and competitions and take part in our end-of-year wearable technology fashion show.