This course explores the idea of research in fashion design. Here, the term ‘research’ is approached as a resource of imaginative and critical inquiry for fashion designers, exploring its role in the formation of concepts and design process in fashion design. In this course, students will study theoretical and applied theory texts/projects, investigating and critically engaging with the principles of research in fashion design and other creative practices. Students will thus theorize on and contextualize their own design work in order to prepare for their Senior Thesis project the following year. The construction of a concept and its manifestation in each step (and ingredients) of the design and research process is a crucial aspect to fully understand the role of fashion design as a driving discipline in contemporary culture. Junior Students have gained familiarity with the relationship between concept and design process since their First Year. What they need to learn at this stage in their education is to reflect, take distance and questions this process further. For this reason, we provide students with analytical and methodological tools that help them study ideas and projects within and outside the field of fashion design, discussing different practices, methods (ethnography, archival research), types of research (visual, material, historical, ethnographic) and fields (design, architecture, art, performance, science, technology, but also medicine, law, business, etc.). Students will be asked to deepen the methodological knowledge acquired so far and strengthen their communication skills in order to articulate stronger design concepts. Students will address these contemporary issues by connecting these readings, themes and projects to the creation of their own design project, paying particularly attention to topics of archive as repository of creativity, gender, sustainable and social thinking, and fashion activism.