Fashion is a real degree and it’s bloody hard

So much more than lectures and essays


If I had £1 for every time I’ve been asked “Is fashion a real degree?” I’d honestly be a millionaire.

I can’t believe that there is still a stigma surrounding the subject.

Before I started studying Fashion Communication & Promotion at Nottingham Trent University this September, it embarrasses me to say that I felt awkward telling people what I would be studying.

It seems that if you haven’t chosen a traditional subject like Medicine, English Literature or Law, people react by turning their noses up as if it’s an automatic reflex they have.

Anyone who questions fashion as a degree has absolutely no right to do so. I’ve been at university just over six weeks and the workload is already crazy.

A lot of courses have high contact times. I’m only in 10 hours per week. But oh boy are you wrong if you think my course must be easy, the majority of our work is done through independent study.

No, that doesn’t mean you can just sack it off and forget about it like a lot of people do, especially in first year. If we don’t work our arses off in our own time then it pretty much screws everything up.

Yep, that’s me sporting freakishly green acrylic paint lips for a recent colour project. They were stained for days afterwards meaning I received a few funny looks but it was so much fun so who cares.

If we don’t show up to lectures and seminars we basically ruin any chance of building a good relationship with our course leaders which is vital in this line of work in order to stand out amongst the hundreds of other people who want a decent job at the end of it.

A lot of people reading this who perhaps don’t study fashion will be thinking something along the lines of “what’s so hard about fashion, it’s just clothes?”

That is where you’re so wrong. Believe it or not, not every fashion student wishes to be a designer.

Fashion courses aren’t like English or Law, we can’t just write an essay and then breath a sigh of relief after its been handed in.

We always have loads of tasks to be getting along with. Most of it is pretty bearable though, who doesn’t love reading magazines?

To anyone who takes the mick out of people who study Fashion, you’re quite frankly the silliest people in the world.

Every single human being on this planet relies on fashion in one way or another. The global fashion market has a whopping $1.7 trillion market value and counting.

Fashion girls

So, to anyone studying fashion, whether it be along the lines of actually designing garments or learning about the market and promotional aspects, I salute you.