Fashion Design BA, Basel Academy of Art and Design

Doing fashion is a culture, and fashion design is a cultural practice. It is not easy to define exactly what fashion is or should be – and perhaps that is why it fascinates us and arouses our desires. Fashion is a global and social system that constantly produces paradoxes that we cannot always resolve. Fashion confronts people with their own contradictions. Fashion is intertwined with all the issues that are currently preoccupying us: gender, new digital spaces, identity, the future, climate, the environment, globalisation, regionalism and social justice.

A strong focus on the body, its perception, movement and body-based design methods, as well as body knowledge, characterise the programme, alongside a strong emphasis on performance and performativity. We deal with other bodies, other bodies of fashion in the midst of debates that are re-evaluating the confrontation between humans and machines. What are artificial and technical changes to the human body, how does the body of fashion move in the metaverse?

‹Doing Fashion Knowledges› (1st to 6th semester)
The courses focus on creative, craft and technical skills, research and design practices: students learn about tools, techniques, theories and methods and practise the skills that underlie the fashion design process. The course content is specifically tailored to each semester. Third-semester students also go on a study trip lasting several days.

‹Doing Fashion Studio & Doing Fashion Purpose› (1st to 4th semester)
A cross-semester elective programme consisting of several specialisations breaks down the division into individual academic years and creates an activating interaction along various points of contact with current topics and design issues. Similarly, Graduate Studio 1+2 (1st and 3rd semesters) enables students to be involved in the realisation of thesis projects and in the public graduation ceremony. An important part of sharing knowledge and experience lies in mutual learning and understanding.

‹Out of Classroom – Internship› (5th semester)
During the practical semester, you will further develop the knowledge you have acquired and test and deepen your skills and abilities in a professional context. The practical period also encourages critical examination of current social and economic systems. This provides an opportunity to expand your international professional network.

Bachelor's thesis (6th and 7th semesters)
The PreThesis Research studio focuses on the exploration of critically reflected fashion design, thus opening up space for independent experimentation and research. Research in the sense of an exploratory process is understood as exploring, investigating and deepening one's own craft skills and design interests. The aim is to concretely situate one's own designs in relation to current ecological, ethical and economic challenges in the fashion system.

The thesis examination is a performative communication situation for one's own fashion vision. The concrete designs are brought to life in space, in motion and in relation to the physical body. On the one hand, the focus is on clarifying one's own approach; on the other hand, the content-related issues addressed in the fields of fashion, such as materials, textile techniques, social and political implications, etc., are also to be discussed. Together, these two aspects reveal a clear positioning in the fashion world.

The Fashion Design programme is aimed at people with a keen interest in fashion and fashion design. You will explore social issues and learn how design shapes the world. You will develop an interest in creative and craft-based methods and techniques, as well as participatory and collaborative work processes, which you will deepen in the areas of professional competence, social competence and personal competence. During your studies, you will learn to treat others, materials and the environment with respect and to act responsibly.

With its studios, labs and central Campus.Workshops, HGK Basel offers ideal conditions for combining technical curiosity, learning techniques and digital know-how. In addition, all students have access to their own workspace in the spacious studios around the clock. The Fashion Design programme has a professionally equipped sewing, leather, knitting and cutting studio, as well as its own digital workshop with a digital cutting system for textiles, paper and solid materials. The infrastructure is open to students 365 days a year.

What opportunities does the younger generation have today to draw attention to themselves, to talk about themselves, and to take action? What is the self if it cannot—and must not—reinvent, reflect, and infinitely reproduce itself in the public sphere and in constantly changing media? The BA Doing Fashion Graduates 2025 at HGK Basel FHNW explore these questions in a very precise and contemporary way. Political, social, and cultural contradictions are stretched across an installative and performative spatial framework. Fashion design is always much more than just clothes and textiles worn on the body. Progressive fashion design can reveal and accentuate a person's personality. In an open process, designers—like artists—reinvent themselves, activate their own imagination and that of others, and thereby open up new spaces of imagination: spaces that address and integrate the audience and its perception—in fashion.

More information

What does it mean to become visible today—within a world of constant self-staging, mediated reflections, and social contradictions? Originally conceived as a live performance, this short film blurs the boundaries between stage and backstage, reality and perception. Guided by Nils Lange, the graduates of Doing Fashion reveal what lies behind the polished image—questioning who decides what is shown and what remains hidden. Political, social, and cultural contradictions are staged within a framework that is both installative and performative. In an open process, fashion designers reinvent themselves, activate their own imagination as well as that of others, and in doing so create new spaces—spaces that address and integrate the audience and its perception, through fashion.

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