Master of Science in Sustainable Fashion

The “Values-Based Leadership” course is designed to develop leaders who can navigate complex organizational environments with integrity, empathy, and a commitment to sustainability. This course is structured into three comprehensive modules: Self-Awareness and Personal Growth, Interpersonal Leadership and Team Dynamics, and Leadership Communication and Career Development. Through a combination of theoretical frameworks, practical applications, and real-world case studies, students will learn to lead with purpose and influence, foster high-performing diverse teams, manage organizational change, and develop their career paths in alignment with their personal values. (3 credits)

This course reflects the fact that organizations do not operate in a vacuum: they are both shaped by and themselves also shape the geo-political, economic, social and technological environments in which they operate. Understanding the interaction between organizations and their wider contexts is essential to effective management and responsible leadership. This course is designed to equip students with the information and analytical skills required to critically reflect upon some of the most significant issues which pose challenges to business managers and organizational leaders in the modern world. (3 credits)

This course introduces the necessary toolkit for applied research in the sustainability field and takes advantage of the ever-growing volume of data being collected to support decision-making in both the public and private sectors. Students gain practical knowledge on effective data representation, basics of financial accounting and financial metrics to understand the practical language of today’s public and private business, foundational information on national economic statistics, valuation methods for cost-benefit analysis, and statistical techniques for the practical business needs of sustainability. (1.5 credits)

We are all curators, with endless content to consider. As visual language becomes dominant in an online consumer marketplace, how do we understand the provenance, relevance, value, worth, and cultural power of fashion? By interrogating the exchange between consumer desire and corporate fashion marketing, this course proposes further investigation of their inherent duopoly. We will consider fashion as an indicator of social affinities, aspirations, privileges — and also of personal, societal, and environmental costs and benefits. As traditional notions of value shift, we’ll envision how we might redefine “luxury” in the context of both climate change and intersectionality. Brand identity is a conceptual and paradigmatic force; we’ll examine its impact on consumerism and ask the question: What are the politics of aesthetics and how are they changing? (3 credits) 

This course covers the range of considerations specific to operating with a common good lens but general to every fashion business, focusing on product creation including designing for reduced impact, material sourcing for sustainability and ethics, supply chain considerations, tools and metrics by which to manage sustainability/ethics/impact in your business, brand voice and impact messaging, circular economy considerations, risk management, positive impact opportunities, best business structures for positive impact, and shifting stakeholder perspectives. Through readings, lectures, class discussion, guest speakers, and development of a sustainability focused business outline students will develop the toolset needed to function at any level of a business – from independent contributor to CEO – to support positive impact. (3 credits)

Sustainability Policy & Metrics prepares students to discern the variety of influences on policy in the sustainability space and to map out ways that companies and NGOs can successfully participate in the policy-making process. Measurement of environmental and social impacts is critical to (i) assess policy-making needs, (ii) track progress, and (iii) speak a shared language to facilitate collaboration, and this course focuses on the case of carbon footprinting as an exemplar of the methods, challenges, and potential of impact measurement and how participants in sustainability policy-making translate such metrics into practice. (3 credits)

This course considers through a systems-thinking lens the challenges of materials used in fashion manufacturing for advancing sustainability and positive impact considerations. Students will study the complicated colonial history of fashion materials, the current global landscape, material innovation, the economic dynamics of materials, transparency, metrics and measurement tools, materials within the global fashion supply chain, and how best to affect change. Through readings, lectures, class discussion, guest speakers, and development of a materials strategy, students will develop the toolset needed to function within a fashion sustainability role leveraging materials to support positive impact. (1.5 credits)

This course covers the social considerations for advancing sustainability and positive impact considerations for a fashion business through a systems-thinking lens. Students will analyze the complicated colonial history of labor in the fashion supply chain, the current global landscape, the economic dynamic of labor within the capitalist system, costing, transparency, metrics and measurement tools, the structure of the global fashion supply chain, and how best to affect change. Through readings, lectures, class discussion, guest speakers, and development of a labor strategy, students will develop the toolset needed to function within a fashion sustainability role leveraging labor strategies to support positive impact.
(3 credits)

Fashion is a concept with many meanings and practices. It is at once a shared global language, a tool for developing personal identity and understanding affiliations with others, and an industry increasingly under fire for its destructive environmental and social practices. To best understand the layers of practice and meaning within the concept of fashion, fashion must be understood and approached as a system. By exploring fashion as a system, it is clearer to see where the system is most resilient, where it is most flexible, why many solutions to date have failed to affect meaningful change, and where the system finds partnership in other systems.  This course introduces and explores the system of fashion, comprising three facets: the material culture of fashion, the symbolic system of fashion, and the global industry of fashion. Leveraging Donella Meadows’ approach to systems thinking, this course asks participants to see fashion and the fashion industry through a holistic lens encompassing practices of representation, consumption, distribution, and production in order to better understand system behaviors, goals, feedback loops, and opportunities for disruption. This course covers a range of topics intended to appropriately contextualize fashion throughout history and within the globalized world of today including fashion and fashion industry history, fashion and globalization, and fashion as communication, as well as introducing participants to frameworks such as sustainability, theory of change, and the UNSDGs. (3 credits)

This course connects students directly with leading practitioners of sustainable and impact-focused fashion, who confront sustainability management issues daily within their respective organizations. Through guest presentations from ten different industry practitioners, students will engage in dynamic discussion, readings, and writing assignments in order to understand real challenges, current motivations, and shifting stakeholders for sustainable-focused fashion businesses. The expert guest presenters, who work in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors and in a wide variety of organizations all focused on driving change within the global fashion industry, will make presentations in each class followed by interactive question and answer sessions with students. Student will reflect on the presentations and subsequent discussions through weekly assignments and group projects. (1.5 credits)

Sustainable Fashion Craft explores the role craft, craftsmanship, and cultures and histories of making have within the fashion system through the dual lens of fashion as a global industry and fashion as a material culture through practices of production, consumption, and representation. This course explores the relationship between sustainability and craft in the fashion system through an understanding of the global fashion and textile supply chain, its histories, its practices, and its opportunities for sustainable transformation. Through the lens of sustainability and craft, this course covers several topics including materials: types, sources, risks, and impacts; processes: product development, supply chains, and end of life management; product: textile and fashion product life cycles, circularity, and garment production; and people: legacies, heritage, culture, appropriation, and craft-based sustainable communities. (3 credits)

This course aims to develop foundational skills in social science research that are needed for basic and applied research at the Master’s level oriented to the successful completion of the final thesis. Students will be introduced to logic, research design, measurement and sampling, methods of data collection and analysis, and research ethics. Students will consider the unique data conditions of the fashion system and engage with the facets of data stewardship and best practice. Students should be able to critically evaluate new concepts, ideas, evidence, and empirical data from a range of sources, develop sound and logical arguments, and transfer their skills into practice. (1.5 credits)

In this course, students are asked to investigate a fashion industry issue, collect relevant data to inform a proposal aimed at driving practical solutions. Drawing on the proposal developed in Research Methods for Fashion Design and the practical approach developed in Sustainable Fashion Strategy, this course asks students to finalize the thesis project proposal and plan, and progress and deliver the completed project. Students are required to demonstrate critical awareness of business practice, relevant theories and research techniques and approaches. The project element of the course in particular offers students the opportunity to apply course concept, theories and techniques, draw on internationally published literature and good practice, and develop and interpret knowledge about fashion industry and sustainability management practice learned throughout the program. (6 credits)