Woodbury University

With over 20 practice-based, fully-accredited professional and liberal arts undergraduate and graduate majors, Woodbury is a non-profit institution dedicated to the student experience. We transform students into innovative professionals who will contribute responsibly to the global community. We achieve academic excellence by focusing on purposeful student engagement, establishing external partnerships and ensuring that all our processes, services and environment enrich the student experience.

Woodbury University cultivates a personal, interactive learning environment that focuses on innovative, practice-based professional and liberal arts education. We add distinct value with our focus on faculty–student interaction and support for student development and achievement.

Core Values

Excellence: Driven by standards of excellence in teaching, services, student wellbeing, community safety and sustainable practices
Ethics: Setting the highest standards of academic and professional behavior to encourage social responsibility
Aspiration: Pursuing ever higher levels of competitiveness, distinctiveness and service learning
Community: Building a culture that values diversity, open communication, collaboration and engagement

Sustainability

The mission of Sustainable Woodbury is to equip students, faculty and staff with theoretical and practical knowledge that addresses sustainability issues in their disciplines, careers, community relationships and daily lives. Many changes within the environment have critically affected our way of life. From water shortages to pollution and climate change, our planet has become stressed, yet our relationship to our surroundings is detached. Acknowledging these environmental, social and economic issues, Woodbury University’s goal is to create and nurture sustainable campus life. At Woodbury, sustainability is regarded as a subject of study and is implemented in every sector of the institution.

Woodbury encourages continued learning about sustainability through coursework, research and the experiences of life on campus. Sustainable Woodbury prompts our community to explore our future, our current status and our past and challenges us to examine our natural and built environments, campus life, curriculum, co-curricular learning opportunities and stewardship of resources in the spirit of shared and just decision making.

Fashion Design | Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.)

Woodbury University’s Fashion Design program is tailored to meet the needs of students wishing to enter the challenging and exciting world of fashion and costume. Our professional faculty and industry experts teach all aspects of fashion design and innovative developments in the fashion industry.

Design Your Future

Students produce original designs and develop unique collections during their studies in the following categories: womenswear, menswear, swimwear, knitwear, activewear, tailoring and couture techniques. Students also have the opportunity to explore additional design categories such as shoes, lingerie, fashion sustainability, millinery and denim. Fundamental skill areas include new approaches to the study of textiles, including a class on treatments, embellishments, laser cutting, silk-screen printing, knitting, dying, fabric printing and embroidery.

Fashion Study Collection

Fashion Design students have access to the Fashion Study Collection. They can choose objects based on construction techniques, designer attribution or by chronology.  Examples chosen vary and can include 18thcentury textiles, footwear, couture beading samples and knitwear.  As any professor or student will tell you, nothing quite compares with being able to examine an object first-hand.  It is one thing to view an image of a Paris couture gown, it is an entirely different experience to personally look at its construction details.

The collection boasts film costumes from such luminaries as Edith Head and Adrian.  Indeed, Hollywood designers have long been associated with Woodbury:  Howard Greer was instrumental in creating the first professional costume design training offered by Woodbury in 1931, and William Travilla, famous for his Marilyn Monroe designs, was a Woodbury graduate. Notable fashion designers represented include Bonnie Cashin, Andre Courreges, Oscar de la Renta, Christian Dior, Mariano Fortuny, James Galanos, Jean Paul Gaultier, Rudi Gernreich, Issey Miyake, Normal Norell, Yves Saint Laurent, Arnold Scassi, Elsa Schiaparelli and Yohji Yamamoto.

Annual Fashion Show

Senior students create their own collections for the annual fashion runway event. A formal senior review process provides an opportunity for students to talk about their vision and design work, and display their collections to a jury of fashion professionals. The culmination of their fashion education is the creation of an industry-level portfolio that will open doors to their dream jobs!

Facilities

Students have access to studios with industrial sewing machines, specialty equipment including embroidery machines, dress forms, gravity-feed irons, computer labs, and drawing studios. The Digital Fabrication lab has a laser cutter and 3D printer. The Judith Tamkin Fashion Center houses rotating exhibits of student work and the Fashion Study Collection.

Courses

Our curriculum promotes classic illustration methods, strong technical skills and creative thinking with emphasis placed on developing the student’s personal design aesthetic. During this hands-on program our students utilize research, design process, and conceptual thinking to develop contemporary fashion collections that are both functional and inventive. The culmination of their fashion education is the creation of an industry-level portfolio.