Top fashion schools around the world

Another college within the University of the Arts London, the London College of Fashion stands out for its wide range of fashion courses. The school offers not only fashion design courses, but also fashion marketing, journalism, buying and merchandising as well as programs in beauty, cosmetic science, fashion curation and criticism, and even courses specializing in footwear and accessories.

More than 5,000 students are enrolled, and tuition fees are the same as at Central Saint Martins, since the two colleges are both part of UAL. Famous graduates include Jimmy Choo and Rupert Sanderson.

Established in 1837, the Royal College of Art (RCA) is the world's leading postgraduate-only art and design university, ranked number one globally for over a decade in the QS World University Rankings by Subject.

Within the RCA School of Design, its renowned Fashion MA and Textiles MA programmes are celebrated for their groundbreaking, critical approaches to design, pushing boundaries in aesthetics, sustainability, and social responsibility.

The RCA fosters global creative leaders, with over 30,000 alumni forming an unparalleled international network. Graduates from its fashion and textiles programs are highly influential, including celebrated names like Ossie Clark, Dame Zandra Rhodes, Christopher Bailey CBE, Philip Treacy OBE, Erdem Moralioglu MBE, Bianca Saunders, and Saul Nash.

The RCA's start-up incubator, InnovationRCA, further empowers these visionaries to translate their ideas into successful global ventures.

Italy has long been known as one of Europe’s main trendsetters, due to its history of political power in classical times as well as its cultural power in the Renaissance era. Cities such as Florence, Rome, Naples, Genoa and Venice have all been recognized as fashion centers but Milan, with its minimalist fashion houses of the 1980s, has developed into the country’s ‘fashion capital’ – and joins New York, Paris and London as an international fashion capital as well.

The Istituto Marangoni is split across three campuses; its main campus is based in Milan and the other two are in London and Paris. The school, home to 2,000 students across all three campuses, offers courses in fashion design, fashion business, fashion buying, brand management and fashion promotion.

Depending on your program, nationality and chosen language of instruction, tuition fees range from €16,200 (US$18,270) to €19,400 (US$21,900). The school, boasting the likes of Franco Moschino and Domenico Dolce as alumni, has a large community of international students.

The Politecnico di Milano was established in 1863 and is the largest school of architecture, design and engineering in Italy, with around 42,000 students enrolled. The school offers an undergraduate program in fashion design and a master’s program in ‘Design for the Fashion System’. It also has some of the lowest tuition fees among the top fashion schools in this list, ranging from €895 to €3,898 per year (~US$1,010 to $4,400), with non-EU students paying the latter amount.

Paris’ long history of being the European fashion center continues to play a fundamental role in the city’s character and perceptions about its stylish (and perhaps stand-offish) residents. High living costs are balanced out by the French public university systems’ low tuition fees, helping give Paris a top five spot in the QS Best Student Cities ranking.

Though New York, London and Milan have all now established themselves as Paris’ equals when it comes to fashion design and journalism, for many prospective fashion students the French capital remains the center of the fashion world. Two of the top fashion schools in Paris are explored here.

With just a few hundred students enrolled, the Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne offers courses on fashion design and technique, world-renowned couture classes and baccalaureate programs.  

It also offers the prestige of belonging to a school associated with the commissioning body in charge of determining what can be categorized as couture. Among the school’s alumni are Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino and André Courreges. Often students are not considered unless they have already completed a design course elsewhere. Tuition fees range from €13,050 to €14,400 (~US$14,720 to $16,240) per year.

An international fashion design and business school based in Paris, ESMOD (l'Ecole Supérieure des Arts et techniques de la Mode) has additional campuses in four other French cities and 21 schools in total worldwide. Offering programs in fashion design and fashion business to its 1,500 students, tuition at ESMOD is currently €10,550 (US$11,900) per year at undergraduate level and €12,900 (~US$15,550) at postgraduate level.

ESMOD is famous not only for its alumni – among which are names such as Thierry Mugler and Nina Garcia – but also for being the first and oldest French fashion design school, founded in 1841, and for having invented both the tape measure and the mannequin.

Antwerp is also making strong steps toward becoming a world-leading fashion capital. Perhaps the most notable fashion school here is the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, an elite design school offering fashion design courses to just over 100 students each year.

Tuition is highly subsidized, even for foreign students, making the total cost approximately €967 (~US$1,090) per year for non-EU students and €238 for EU students, the cheapest fees to be featured in this article. Students must have proficiency in Dutch and an experimental and avant-garde approach is encouraged.

Tokyo’s Bunka Fashion College offers programs in fashion design, fashion creation and technology, marketing and accessories and textiles. Bunka is known for its Japanese avant-garde designs as well as its more academic marketing and technology courses and is home to 8,000 students spread across its two colleges.

Bunka Fashion College gained international prominence in the 1960s, when graduates of the school began showing their designs in Paris. A good understanding of Japanese is required and tuition is around JP¥ 1,414,360 (~US$12,800) plus extra fees.

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This article was originally published in March 2014. It was last updated in February 2019.