Overview
Savannah College of Art and Design offers undergraduate programs in accessory design, fashion, fashion marketing and management, fibers, jewelry, and the newest offering, business of beauty and fragrance. SCAD offers the largest jewelry and fiber programs in the United States, the first MFA in accessory design in the world, the first graduate-level luxury and fashion management program, and the first business of beauty and fragrance program in the United States.
SCAD’s small studio classes provide individual attention to students and five instructional hours each week for in-depth coverage of materials and methods. From ideation to execution, SCAD faculty, who are themselves fashion leaders with industry connections and experience, intentionally work one-on-one with students to optimize their creative opportunities for success. The university’s advanced technology prepares students to accomplish compelling digital fashion designs, and students benefit from the opportunity to pursue CFDA+, Adobe and Rhino certifications — only available at elite universities.
Students may enhance their specialized degrees with minors that invite consideration for their own creative process in new ways while illuminating future possibilities and developing cross-disciplinary skills. Minors contribute directly to the career preparation that SCAD emphasizes, enriching students' education through exposure to a range of design disciplines.
Undergraduate Programs
Fashion
After progressing through SCAD's foundation studies and general education curriculum, undergraduate fashion students begin their major coursework that leads to hands-on studio courses. The fashion program’s dedicated full-time faculty offers individualized attention for the development of these personalized skills. Students explore fashion and merge technical dexterity with personal vision. This culminates in the creation of garments and complete collections that serve as important career-making evidence in graduates' portfolios.
The Gulfstream Center for Design, open to all students, features state-of-the-art fabrication labs. Other resources include a five-axis computer numeric control router, a three-axis CNC milling machine, rapid prototypers and laser cutters. The most current digital applications are available, including AutoCAD, Autodesk 3ds Max, Adobe Creative Cloud Complete, SolidWorks, SketchUp, KeyShot and Rhino 3D. In addition, in response to shifting industry standards, SCAD emphasizes the use of motion media and animation software for the purposes of portfolios and presentations. Furthermore, numerous fashion-related courses are grounded in the use of 3-D printing and laser cutting, which al-lows students to refine prototypes before final production.
Accessory Design
Undergraduates in accessory design learn the manifold processes required to produce their own collections. From sewing technology to computer-aided design, students master high-end tools and hone their personal aesthetic. They learn to fabricate designs from unified concepts and practice in 2-D and 3-D formats. Toward the end of their studies, they present a well-defined body of work that demonstrates expertise and vision.
At SCAD, students do not just sketch and conceptualize their designs. Here, students take their technical drawings and produce real prototype accessories using industry-standard tools in three dedicated accessory studios. Accessory design students practice both traditional and computer-aided design, using industrial sewing machines, skiving machines, CAD software and more. The university also offers students the opportunity to bolster their professional credentials by earning CFDA+ certification and Rhino certification, an option not available at many schools in the U.S.
SCAD’s accessory design faculty range from master shoemakers to handbag designers, and the university’s technical teachers have served in both designer and mass workrooms. The mentorship of these instructors helps transform the idea to the real, creating fantastic concepts that have both purpose and relevance. In accessory design, students have secured internships and jobs at Alexander Wang, Coach, Derek Lam, Kate Spade, Proenza Schouler, Reebok, The Row, Vince Camuto and more.
Fashion Marketing and Management
SCAD's fashion marketing and management program places students at the intersection of fashion, business and marketing – with an eye towards inventing the future. They are educated to wear a variety of hats and drive innovation through materials sourcing, supply chain management, manufacturing, economic strategy, trend forecasting, consumer understanding, product promotion and investor relations.
Fashion marketing and management undergraduates benefit from a comprehensive curriculum in product development, material sourcing, visual merchandising, retailing and advertising. Using basic fundamentals coupled with mega-data research, each student works closely with full-time, professionally connected professors to build a career-oriented portfolio that includes business plans, branding campaigns and more to reinvent the marketplace for the future.
Business of Beauty and Fragrance
At SCAD, business of beauty and fragrance students are instilled with an in-depth knowledge of aesthetics, style, cosmetics, fragrance and adornment, allowing them to identify and seize their niches within this fluid and ever-evolving landscape. From small-batch start-ups to prestigious brands, SCAD students learn to launch new products, engage modern consumers, maximize financial outcomes and build long-term brand equity through comprehensive curriculum attuned to contemporary culture.
Jewelry
In Savannah, SCAD jewelry students design and produce works within a 13-800-square-foot studio environment that puts cutting-edge technology at their fingertips. Along the way, students are guided by faculty who are acclaimed, award-winning artists bringing decades of industry insight into the classroom. The curriculum focuses on conceptual thinking, refined craftsmanship and the use of sophisticated technology allowing students to master every element of this contemporary, international field. At all levels of study, students are encouraged to think independently and to embellish existing notions of personal adornment.
Fahm Hall, home to the jewelry department, features technology that enables students to fabricate, cast, finish, enamel, laser weld, anodize, electroplate, electroform, smith silver and set stones. Tools include LaserStar Compact and LaserStar workstations for laser welding, a ROD Induction Heating Solution for casting, a microscope system, a Stratasys Dimension SST 1200 printer for ABS plastic, two Solidscape T66 wax printers, two Roland JWX-10 milling machines, and four advanced SensAble pens for digital sculpting, among other tools. Fahm Hall also houses SCADlab, available to all students, offering 3-D printers and large-format photo printers for special projects and regular use.
Uniquely positioned at the forefront of the technology, the jewelry program recently expanded into interactive wear-ables. Ensuring that students are in the vanguard before they graduate, the department also offers a materials and processes class that explores emerging materials in the industry such as feathers and semi-precious metals.
Jewelry students and alumni have been recruited and hired by Anthropologie, Chanel, Coach, David Yurman, Fossil, Givenchy, Harry Winston, Henri Bendel, Kate Spade, Macy's, Michael Kors, Showroom35, Swarovski, Tiffany & Co. and Tory Burch.
Fibers
The largest fibers program in the U.S., fibers undergraduate students build a solid foundation of research and technical processes in color, surface design, material exploration, structure, weaving and the history of textiles. From there, they choose from a wide range of electives — from embellishment and embroidery to 3-D printing — to influence a comprehensive body of work that lends itself to a directed career path. As the largest fiber department in the United States, SCAD's fibers department offers the nation’s largest facility dedicated to a fibers program to match.
SCAD’s fibers program has implemented new courses in business, hospitality, couture embroidery and luxury to anticipate future trends and further develop fibers students’ skillsets by allowing them to combine skilled handiwork of the past with the technology of the future. Students’ careers testify to the strength and merit of the university’s curriculum, like one SCAD fibers alumna who now works for a NASA subcontractor in a blanket fabrication lab helping to design and build the metallic blankets seen on the Hubble Space Telescope’s exteriors. Fibers students work to develop new textiles for home and industry while also learning the fine traditions of couture embroidery and other enhancements.
SCAD fibers students utilize Jukie Sewing machines, Gerber plotters, jacquard handlooms with 2,306 individually con-trolled warp threads (which allows students to create intricate cloth based on drawings, images and patterns for upholstery, fashion and fine art), CompuDobby looms (on which students weave small, complex geometric patterns with a variety of materials), Mutoh ValueJet 1938TX printers for digital printing (with reactive, disperse and acid dyes directly onto natural and synthetic materials), Roland UV flatbed printers (that can print on almost any material up to 4’x8’ including wood, metal, fabric and acrylic), Wacom drawing tablets and the latest respective software for each. Students incorporate sustainable practices in their designs through use of recycled material and through using natural materials, such as natural dyes created from plants in SCAD’s community garden.
Fibers student alumni have established their own successful studios as well as pursued careers at companies such as Aerothreads, Anthropologie, Bokja Design, Brunschwig & Fils, Chilewich, Chrysler, Cone Denim, Diane von Furstenberg, Dyenamix, Kelly Wearstler, Lilly Pulitzer, Nike, Shaw Industries, Target, west elm and WGSN.
Graduate Programs
SCAD empowers fashion graduate students, half of whom are international students, to step into powerful roles at international companies, to launch entrepreneurial endeavors, and to become masters of art, design and the written word. Through award-winning degree programs, small class sizes and professionally connected faculty, students are prepared to realize their highest aspirations.
The university’s fashion graduate degree programs emphasize research and analysis alongside studio creation and fieldwork, engendering a holistic, integrated understanding of design. Peer and individual critiques and seminar discussions provide a forum for the development of a self-critical framework. Students select electives that reflect their interests and enable them to delve into related disciplines — for example, classes offered in fashion journalism and fashion photography. Each program culminates in a final project or thesis, a pinnacle of the graduate experience that may include traditional scholarly research, a body of work, exhibitions and more. These academic quests often develop into specialized career tracks and lead to groundbreaking exposure.
The university's graduate programs pioneer new fashion frontiers. SCAD has made fashion history as the only university in the world to offer an M.F.A. in accessory design and the first in the U.S. to offer an M.A. in the discipline. Graduate students in the program engage in comprehensive research and analysis of visual culture and trends that inform the development of a robust collection.
SCAD offers the world’s first M.A. and M.F.A. in the specialized field of luxury and fashion management. While offered on-ground in Savannah, Atlanta and Hong Kong, the university provides working professionals already active in the field with the opportunity to pursue an M.A. completely online through SCAD eLearning. The luxury and fashion management course of study emphasizes operations and leadership through strategic studies in consumer behavior, marketing, brand and supply chain management, communications, and promotion. Coursework involves research and exploration of existing models, consumer needs and new opportunities. Digital media and interactive environments are incorporated into assignments. Students in the M.A. program use these learning experiences to create their own compelling proposals and business solutions of relevance to the international luxury market. Through wide-ranging electives, internships and thesis research, M.F.A. candidates hone strategic expertise that prepares them for powerful roles at the highest echelons of the industry or in academia.
In pursuit of an M.A. or M.F.A. degree in fashion and accessory design, SCAD students prepare to lead in the ever-evolving world of fashion through a rigorous curriculum anchored by creative thinking and dynamic technology. Guided by professors with extensive industry experience, students explore fashion from the conceptual to the commercial and merge technical dexterity with personal vision to develop original fashion collections. Studio courses culminate in the creation of complete collections that serve as important career-making evidence in graduates’ portfolios. The university’s advanced technology prepares students to accomplish compelling digital fashion designs, and students benefit from the opportunity to pursue CFDA+, Adobe and Rhino certifications — only available at select universities.
The M.A. degree program in jewelry offers in-depth study and a focused approach to jewelry creation, meeting industry specific objectives. The M.F.A. degree culminates in a thesis project to showcase students’ sophisticated contributions to their field. At all levels of study, students are encouraged to think independently and to embellish existing notions of personal adornment.
In the fibers program, graduate students hone professional expertise through advanced study and the completion of a focused research project at the M.A. level, and through fieldwork, teaching internships, a fully articulated body of work and a thesis engaging a specialty fibers topic at the M.F.A. level. SCAD's fibers department offers the largest facility dedicated to a fibers program in the U.S.
