Museum of Modern Art is offering free online course on Fashion as Design. This course is open for general audiences and those specifically interested in art, design, and fashion.

Fashion as Design focuses on a selection of more than 70 garments and accessories from around the world, ranging from kente cloth to jeans to 3D-printed dresses. The course will start on June 11, 2018.

Course At Glance

Effort: 2-3 hours/week
Subject: Fashion as Design
Institution: Museum of Modern Art and Coursera
Languages: English
Price: Free
Certificate Available: Yes
Session: Course starts on June 11, 2018

Providers’ Details

The Museum of Modern Art is a place that fuels creativity, ignites minds, and provides inspiration. With extraordinary exhibitions and the world’s finest collection of modern and contemporary art, MoMA is dedicated to the conversation between the past and the present, the established and the experimental. Our mission is helping you understand, enjoy, and use the art of our time.

About This Course

Among all objects of design, our clothes are the most universal and intimate. Like other kinds of design, fashion thrives on productive tensions between form and function, automation and craftsmanship, standardization and customization, universality and self-expression, and pragmatism and utopian vision. It exists in the service of others, and it can have profound consequences—social, political, cultural, economic, and environmental.

Fashion as Design focuses on a selection of more than 70 garments and accessories from around the world, ranging from kente cloth to jeans to 3D-printed dresses. Through these garments, we’re going to look closely at what we wear, why we wear it, how it’s made, and what it means. You’ll hear directly from a range of designers, makers, historians, and others working with clothing every day—and, in some cases, reinventing it for the future. Studio visits, interviews, and other resources introduce the history and development of each garment and their changing uses, meanings, and impact over time.

Learning Outcomes

• Develop critical tools to appreciate and contextualize fashion design—from everyday clothing to couture garments—through many different perspectives.
• Trace the history, development, and impact of garments over time, and explore how they may be reinvented.
• Investigate garments through multiple lenses including politics, identity, and economics.
• Understand more about the lifecycle of clothing, from its design and production to its marketing, distribution, and consumption.
• Better comprehend the choices you make about fashion with respect to the visual language of dress, individual and collective identities, and issues such as labor practices, sustainability, and body politics.

Requirements

General audiences and those specifically interested in art, design, and fashion. No pre-requisites in fashion or design required.

Instructors

Paola Antonelli
Senior Curator, Department of Architecture & Design, and Director, Department of Research & Development

Michelle Millar Fisher
Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design

Stephanie Kramer
Research Assistant, Department of Architecture & Design

How To Join This Course

• Go to the course website
• Create a Coursera account to SignUp
• Choose “Register Now” to get started.

Apply Now