MA in Global Communications: Fashion Track

Track Description

Fashion studies offer ways for students to decipher the political, economic, social and cultural evolution of the contemporary world through interdisciplinary insight into a vital global industry. Combining communications approaches with those from art history, business, semiotics and politics, to name a few, the Fashion Track allows students to balance the key skills and core theory of the MAGC program with industry insight and tailored practical experience in the various professions within the fashion world. Particular emphasis is given to the ethical aspects of fashion, looking at sustainability, business ethics and labor processes.

Paris has long been a global hub for fashion, hosting multiple annual Fashion Weeks and the worldwide headquarters of major luxury brands, including Yves St Laurent and LVMH. This means students regularly gain on-site experience at fashion events across the city and abroad and hear from fashion experts in the classroom, both of which allow for immersion in relevant professional networks in fields such as fashion journalism, brand management, sustainable design and public relations.

Alongside the skills developed through core MAGC courses, students in the fashion track develop critical, creative and transferable skills through the study of fashion theory and practical media production. Topics include:

• fashion as a cultural and social phenomenon;
• the local and global histories and geographies that make up the Parisian fashion industry;
• sustainability in fashion;
• fashion entrepreneurship and marketing;
• digital fashion communications; and
• decentralized fashion practices and ways of working outside of established fashion hierarchies.

Fashion students also have access to a limited number of electives from across global communications and other relevant disciplines, including those in brands and belief, the museum as medium, and identity formation in a transnational world.