Craig Higgins

Craig has worked in the high-end fashion industry and across the university sector. His work draws on interests in heritage skills and the artisanal methods used in the production of hand made goods and bespoke items.

His course leadership has explored interrelationships between technologies, techniques, conceptual thinking and design translation.

Craig graduated from the University of Brighton in 1996 and has worked professionally at the top end of the Fashion Industry. Having exhibited and showed his own collections in London and Paris during the 1990’s, a collaborative partnership with a printed textiles designer. Together they produced womenswear collections  fusing creative approaches to surface pattern and embellishment with innovative pattern cutting methodologies and tailoring. The collections featured in key press and sold internationally through high-end independent boutiques and department stores. His professional experience has also included working with top international fashion designers, Sonnentag Mulligan, John Galliano, Emma Cook and Roland Mouret, with whom he worked as a design and sampling consultant and creative pattern-cutter. During this time he has developed an in-depth understanding of contemporary fashion design and industry practice as well as skills in fashion design, creative pattern cutting and garment manufacture.

Craig has extensive experience with the Teaching and Learning of Fashion Design, having gained a PG Certificate in Learning and Teaching for Higher Education in 2009 and has worked across the UK Higher Education sector at undergraduate and postgraduate level for over 14 years. Craig’s work in HE has been within a variety of roles at The University of Brighton, London College of Fashion, The University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka and at Norwich University of the Arts, were he has played a key role in the delivery and development of the BA and MA courses in the subject area. In 2011 receiving a Student Experience award in recognition of his work and contribution to the subject.

Craig's research and practice, through its materials focus and couture/ craft approach explores notions of Materiality, Meaning and Value, in particular those associated with quality and craftsmanship in luxury fashion. An interest in heritage skills and the artisanal methods used in the production of luxury goods, couture and bespoke clothing, jewellry and accessories informs Craig’s work, which has explored luxury branding, materiality, sentiment and memory. Current work focuses on understanding the construction of tacit knowledge by the maker and how this is embodied by the artefact.

Through the PG Teaching Certificate in Higher Education, Craig developed an interest in the pedagogy of fashion design and has been engaged in the development of innovative approaches to teaching and learning within the subject, in particularly the transfer and development of core skills within the fashion design process, creativity and technical skills development. Craig has worked on action learning projects and student case studies which explore the interaction of creative and technical skills and the integration of digital and manual methods within the environment of the design studio. Examining the pedagogy of creativity and creative practice and the interrelationships between technologies, techniques, conceptual thinking and design translation.