Presence of sustainability approaches in fashion design academic curricula: evidences from Southern Europe

Abstract

This paper will present an analysis of academic offers and curricula in Portugal, Spain, France and Italy (four countries from Southern Europe with an important fashion industry) in fashion and design courses: bachelor, master and PhD programs. The discussion will be focused in several aspects of the topics “sustainability”, the main one, “eco-design”, “etic fashion”, “slow fashion”, “green products”, “social design” or “slow design”. The way how these European universities communicate these topics to their students will be also analyzed and described. In the last years social media and websites became the main channels to communicate with the new consumers and to the future candidates that will applying to new jobs in fashion industries, and they are much more aware to sustainability topics. This qualitative research was developed during six months. The methodology followed during the research was documental analysis, using different sources, and also was done the follow up of the Higher Education Institutions’ webpages in these four cases (countries). The observations and results can be helpful to understand how each country is approaching the sustainability in academic curricula and redesign or redefine new curricula or new courses, focused on sustainability, and to define learning strategies and tools to prepare future professionals of fashion industry more conscious to sustainable topics.