The fashion minor is the junction where fashion meets business. The fashion minor consists of 6 courses, which are offered during the Fall and Spring semesters, and well as during the Summer sessions. Students have the ability to complete the fashion minor in two summers.
The curriculum currently offers introductory courses in fashion forecasting, fashion promotion, textiles, research, data analysis, economic management, and managing apparel productions and people. You will graduate with a strong working knowledge of apparel product development, apparel manufacturing, textile application, and the ability to utilize technology not only for analysis but also for communication and marketing. You will also understand market trends as well as popular styles in a specific location(s), culture, age, and economic groups.
Fashion Minor Required Courses:
- FITS 204 (previously RCSC 204): Fashion Consumer and the Economy (3 units)* - A study of consumer behavior and fashion adoption processes in contemporary society, the nature of fashion theories, the life-cycle, social and cultural processes and evolution of fashion, and the role of fashion in the global economy in general and in the fashion business industry in particular.
- FITS 215 (previously FCSC 215): Introduction to Fashion Retailing (3 units)* - A comprehensive overview of how the fashion business works. The course will feature topics covering the past and present in fashion personalities, fads, pop culture, product development and retail. The class will go through examples of people, principles, management practices, and retailer. In addition, we will examine fashions ethical awareness of the twenty first century.
- FITS 345 (previously FCSC 345): The Science of Textiles (3 units) - This course integrates the chemical composition, molecular arrangement, and physical structure of natural and manufactured fibers. Yarn and fabric manufacturing processes as well as finishing techniques are included. Attention is given to how these characteristics and techniques affect function, performance, and quality of textile products.
- FITS 333 (previously FCSC 333): Fashion Promotion (3 units) - The fashion industry is, ever-changing and a greater understanding of all aspects of fashion promotion is necessary for student success. Communicating effectively across a range of platforms with respect to the consumer and maintaining consistency to navigate the global landscape in fashion communication along with managing emerging trends in social marketing and event planning is necessary for all fashion promotion. Use of current news, events, and personalities as a basis for writing and evaluating institutional and product publicity releases for news and feature stories. Students plan publicity campaigns and create a press kit. Students plan and develop sales promotion activities in order to achieve specific marketing and communications objectives. Both business-to-business and business-to-consumer sales promotion campaigns are developed. This online course provides an analysis of the principles and practices of e-commerce in fashion retailing and their relationship to customer service integrated as fashion promotion. Topics included a survey of brick & mortar fashion customer, its technology underpinnings; understanding and communicating with the e-customer. Case studies and projects will be used to apply the concepts.
- FITS 335 (previously FCSC 335): Fashion Forecasting and Research Trends (3 units) - Develop the science of predicting future fashion trends. Learn the relationship between forecasting, trend prediction, external, social changes, and historical style movements. Analyze past styled movements and establish an understanding of historical context, consumer trends, buying patterns, fads, and cults. Research color palettes, surface and fabric trends and concepts, form and silhouette changes, and product shifts. Learn to synthesis trends for new product by gaining insight into consumers' attitudes and lifestyles phases. Group and individual projects are used to access the students learning. This course is not intended for RCSC majors. No RCSC credit will be given for this course.
- FITS 435 (previously FCSC 435): Society Culture and Fashion Relationships (3 units) - Universally, people make daily choices about what to or not to wear. This course presents a comparative examination of fashion across different cultural perspectives using Western and non-Western examples; we will take a three-pronged approach to distinguish dress across cultures, uncovering its relationship to human beings as biological, aesthetic, and social creatures. We will review readings collected from course text books, academic journals and other current articles from magazines and newspapers. In addition we will analyze the complexity of dress from a multidisciplinary perspective. Therefore we will explore topics that include anthropology, sociology, economics, fine arts, religion, natural sciences and technological changes.
FCSC 225 is no longer available. This course has been replaced by FCSC 345. If your advisement report is showing FCSC 225 as incomplete you will need to ensure you take FCSC 345 instead.
The classes are offered online during the summer for your convenience and the minor is designed to be completed in two summers.
*RCSC 204 is offered in Fall, Spring, and Summer and FCSC 215 is offered in Fall as a hybrid course (online and in person course) and Summer (fully online). It is preferred that FCSC 215 is taken prior to enrolling in the other Fashion Minor courses.
How to Declare a Fashion Minor:
To declare the minor, please see the following information session, followed by a brief quiz and a form to declare the minor:
Fashion Minor Info Session and Quiz
Note: Your University of Arizona GPA needs to be a 2.0 or higher in order to declare the fashion minor. The classes are on a first come first served basis, and students will enroll themselves through UAccess.
If you have additional questions please feel free to contact Tiffany Ortega via email at tortega@arizona.edu
