Overview

Sportswear incorporates apparel worn for a vast range of activities, from traditional team sports and athletics through to outdoor pursuits and watersports. 

Designing sportswear is about much more than just aesthetics. Specialist sports apparel is technically engineered to ensure fitness for purpose and to optimise the wearer’s performance, whether they are climbing a mountain, sailing a dinghy across a lake, or running a 100-meter sprint.

The MSc Sportswear Design course at BCU combines creativity with science to equip designers with a combination of technical design skills and sports science knowledge. 

Whilst exploring the sportswear sector, you will consider practical, social, environmental, and economic factors, identify issues, and respond to opportunities for new products. You will learn to engineer innovative functional garments that meet the specific needs you have identified, incorporating ethical and sustainable practices, and pushing the boundaries of the growing sportswear apparel market.

With support from leading sportswear brands and industry professionals, you will develop your technical design process from concept exploration through to final product, gaining an understanding of performance fabrics, construction techniques and sports appropriate features and fit.

With access to lab testing facilities and the Alexander Stadium, experimenting with prototypes will become embedded in your practice you will analyse data and evaluate features and fit against the functional criteria of specific sports, enabling you to create professionally researched and considered garments that are fit for purpose.

You will further enhance your knowledge of performance sportswear design and manufacturing by working with our industry partners. You will develop professional presentation and communication skills to support your future employability and field trips, and associations with local sports fraternities, live industry briefs and work placements will all boost your industry network.

What's covered in this course?

The initial stages of the course will include lectures, seminars and workshops covering important academic research skills, as well as methods for concept exploration and idea development.

You will learn to translate sports specific user needs into functional products that are also aesthetically pleasing. Seminars and talks from visiting tutors and industry professionals will provide access to specialist knowledge around performance fabrics, industry standards and the test methods used to assess and evaluate fabrics and garments.

In semester two you will take your learning to a deeper level and refine your personal practice. In a live industry brief, you will be enterprising and innovative within a commercial project's parameters. This involves developing your critical thinking and analysis skills and fine tuning your concept exploration, design prototyping, testing and evaluation process. 

Workshops on design thinking and circular design will increase the sustainable principles of your practice. Talks from and discussions with industry professionals will build confidence and enhance your specialist knowledge and skills.

The opportunity to take a work placement will strengthen your network connections and give you first-hand experience of the sportswear industry, strengthening your future employability.

In your final semester you will implement all you have learned and demonstrate your creative and technical proficiency with an entrepreneurial, self-directed project.