Fashion education

There are a number of well known art schools and design schools world wide that offer degrees in fashion design and fashion design technology. Some colleges also offer Masters of Fashion courses. Though it is not a requirement to have a Masters level, it is recommended by those already working in the industry to study at this level. The most notable of design schools in Europe include London College of Fashion, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of Westminster and Kingston University in London, Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland, and the University of East London (UEL) also in London. Limerick School of Art and Design, Griffith College and the National College of Art and Design offer reputable BA of Fashion Design courses in Ireland. Istituto Marangoni, Domus Academy, Politecnico of Milan, NABA - Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano, Istituto Europeo di Design, University Iuav of Venice in Italy, the Fashion Federation PARIS] European Fashion Accreditation www.Fashion-Board.com, Antwerp Fashion Academy in Belgium. There is Parsons The New School for Design, Creative Business House, Fashion Institute of Technology and the Pratt Institute in New York City. Elsewhere in the United States there is the Savannah College of Art and Design, Virginia Commonwealth University, Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago in Chicago. The National Institute of Fashion Technology in India, Shih Chien University in Hong Kong, RMIT University in Melbourne, Fu Jen Catholic University in Taiwan and the Asian University chain, Raffles College of Design and Commerce, all have reputable fashion design courses.The only Ivy League University having a Fashion Design undergraduate program is Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. The program is offered by the department of Fiber Science & Apparel Design]. Cornell University also offers the only Ph.D. program in apparel design in the United States. The program is intended to address the needs of academia, industry and research by considering apparel design as an applied science that embraces design, technology, physical sciences, the humanities and social sciences in order to meet the human needs for clothing. There are many universities that offer fashion design throughout the United States. The major incorporating fashion design may have alternative names like Apparel and Textiles or Apparel and Textile Design and may be housed in departments such as Art and Art History or F

Designers work within a hierarchical system.

"The designers are most stratified in the French system of fashion [...] Fashion ensures the functioning of a system of dominant and subordinate positions within a social order. Fashion is ideological in that it is also part of the process in which particular social groups, in this case elite designers, establish, sustain and reproduce positions of power and relations of dominance and subordination. The positions of dominance and subordination appear natural and legitimate, not only to those in positions of dominance, but also to those in subordinate positions. Fashion and the medium of fashion, that is clothing, offer means to make inequalities of socioeconomic status appear legitimate, and, therefore, acceptable."^[3]

A "mythical conception of a designer as a 'creative genius' disconnected from social conditions"^[4] is central for the working of the fashion system and for the reproduction of fashion as ideology. Creativity is socially constructed and not an innate given, i.e. many may be gifted but no one can become a famous designer without being legitimized by the fashion system and its gatekeepers.^[5]

The star system is as essential for the fashion industry as for any Culture industry. "Genre and the star system are attempts to produce something analogous to brand names in cultural industries. [...] Stars are indispensable because it is part of the ideology of creativity that creative works must have an identifiable author."^[6]

amily and Consumer Studies.