The CCA fashion Design program is a creative laboratory that cultivates visionary thinking, proposes disruptive design solutions and creates new aesthetics reflecting the zeitgeist and context of design in the 21st century.

The fashion design world in is  the midst of enormous change, in part because of new technologies that originated here in the San Francisco Bay Area. We see the role of the fashion designer shifting rapidly and recognize that designers need to be adaptable to working not only in a traditional context but also in cross-discipline teams, embracing new technologies, using sustainability goals as points of innovation and spearheading new systems of making, distributing and experiencing fashion.

How do you feel as a creative individual working in a world of rapidly developing technologies, declining natural resources and shifting socio-cultural structures? What is your vision for the future? How can your ideas be effectively articulated and expressed to influence change for the better? CCA's fashion design faculty is committed to helping you to develop your own voice and to present your point of view through the lens of fashion.

Your fashion design education at CCA will be grounded in rigorous traditional techniques (tailoring, pattern drafting, sewing), combined with a wide range of experimental and cross discipline methods and material manipulations (textile treatments, digital technologies, molding etc).

You will be exposed to new forms of business that question traditional fashion industry practices and respond to the emergent sharing and circular economies.

You will have the opportunity to participate in national and international competitions, such as Arts of Fashion, Swarovski Foundation Creatives for our Future, The Bio Design Challenge, and to exhibit your work in CFDA's Future Fashion Graduate Showcase. You will build a strong practical sense through California-based internships at companies such as Levi Strauss & Co, Athleta, Banana Republic, Amour Vert, Libertine, TEA Collection, Erica Tanov, Cradle to Cradle Institute, Nice Collective, Gap Inc., EON, Everlane and more.

For your final capstone thesis experience, you will contribute to the tone and form of the Annual Fashion Show, which is revisited each year to reflect the evolving zeitgeist identified by the current senior class. And you will graduate with a body of work in analogue and digital portfolio forms and with tools relevant to 21st century fashion design practice.

Top 10 Schools for Fashionistas (College Magazine)

Top 50 Fashion Design Programs in the US (Fashion-Schools.org)

Top 10 Programs on the West Coast (Fashion-Schools.org)

Top 10 Sustainable Fashion Design Programs in the World (The University Network)