For everyone working in fashion today, integrating digital and physical tools is essential. This minor immerses you in contemporary fashion design by exploring how ideas develop through hands-on experimentation with digital and physical crafts, materials, and bodies, and how design both responds to and shapes social, ecological, and cultural contexts.

During the minor, you develop a personal design practice that is critical, experimental, and well-positioned, questioning existing systems and exploring alternative ways of designing and making fashion.

Across two hands-on phases, you research and digitise an existing garment, reimagine it, and translate this work into a coherent collection using non-traditional approaches that combine digital tools with physical making. Theory functions as a strategic tool, helping you ask better questions, recognise impact, and clearly articulate and position your work within contemporary fashion practice.

Interdisciplinary

Even though the minor is design-focused, it combines design with strategy and communication to broaden and strengthen your skill set.

For (fashion) designers, the minor offers the opportunity to deepen and expand your design craft through contemporary, experimental approaches, while learning to work confidently with digital craft as an integrated part of making, and strengthening your ability to position, articulate, and present your work.

For (fashion) branding students, the minor offers hands-on experience with designing and digital prototyping as tools to develop and test brand concepts. By working with tangible design outcomes, you learn to visualise products, collections, and brand worlds more clearly, and to strengthen your strategy, storytelling and pitching.

For (Fashion) management students, this minor provides insight into product development and through direct involvement in design and making processes. Working with digital prototypes helps you explore and test product and collection ideas, supporting stronger decision-making around product, brand, and strategy, and improving collaboration with designers.

Non-AMFI students: students with a non-AMFI background can choose a design perspective to work from based on their educational background and familiarity with the mentioned software programmes.

Phase 1

By the end of Phase 1

• you will be able to research, digitise, and reimagine an existing garment through hands-on experimentation.

Phase 2

By the end of Phase 2,

• you will be able to independently develop and realise a coherent fashion collection using alternative, non-traditional approaches to collection-making.

• you will be able to clearly position, articulate, and present your design practice to relevant audiences.

 

These learning aims are developed through the six AMFI competencies and the Hypercraft approach, where design extends beyond tradition through hands-on experimentation with digital tools, materials, bodies, and the world around you.

Students should have advanced English and have some knowledge of the fashion industry and digital software programmes.

A high specification 'gaming' PC with sufficient GPU for programmes such as Blender and Substance Painter is required. Hiring a PC for the length of the semester is possible via external parties but is the student's responsibility and at their own expense.

Recommendations:
 A laptop with a strong graphic card is important for this minor
 Processor: Intel i7 of i9 or one out of the AMD Ryzen serie
 Memory: (minimal) 16GB
 Storage: (minima)l 500GB
 Graphic card: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 or higher
 Different software applications f.i. CLO3d, Blender, Substance Painter and more.

The manual will inform you further about the software to be used.

Timetable to be confirmed.

Contact time:
The program is full-time, this means we count on an availability of 40 hours per week including contact hours on-line or live and self-study in the AMFI. Around 15 contact hours a week of classes and workshops at AMFI.

Fashion Decoding – 10 credits, Professional Product
Fashion Coding – 20 credits, Professional Product

Resits:
According to the AMFI OER: Two assessement occasions in the academic year. Dates to be determined.

Costs:
Should you not have a PC with sufficient GPU, then students will have to hire one for a period of 6 months. The costs vary could be between 360 Euro and 600 Euro depending on where you hire it.

Questions about the minor?
Contact Ellis Droog via e.g.droog@hva.nl

Questions about the Kies op Maat procedure?
Contact Eunice Williams via Resultsandregistration-amfi@hva.nl

Applications will be processed in order of receipt signed learning agreements.