De Montfort University is setting a new standard for industry-ready fashion education
Fashion is undergoing its most significant transformation in a generation. Circular design, lifecycle accountability and compliance requirements are no longer emerging topics - they are live industry expectations and the next generation of fashion leaders needs to arrive ready for them.
CircKit for Universities is an academic licensing programme designed to bridge that gap, giving students hands-on access to the circular design and compliance tools used by real industry teams. De Montfort University is the first institution publicly confirmed to go live with the platform, embedding CircKit across multiple courses.
By working directly inside real industry lifecycle assessment (LCA) tools and navigating compliance and eco-design strategies first-hand, students develop a practical fluency in sustainability and circularity that theory alone cannot replicate - along with the critical thinking and decision-making skills employers are looking for from the moment they enter the workplace.
Universities are under pressure to prepare their students for where the fashion industry is heading, not just where it has been. De Montfort University is demonstrating that commitment and forward-thinking approach as the first official academic partner of CircKit, and the first institution in the UK to embed its industry-grade circular fashion technology into their curricula.
What began as a focused conversation about LCAs in the fashion design curriculum, quickly evolved into something far more ambitious: a wider collaboration spanning circular design, compliance literacy and the industry-ready skills employers are actively looking for.
“Adopting CircKit has been a natural step in embedding the Design Council’s Skills for Planet within our Schools curricula at De Montfort University. It allows us to bring Life Cycle Assessment into the heart of teaching, giving students a practical way to understand and act on sustainability.” - Stuart Lawson, Deputy Head at School of Design Innovation, De Montfort University.
"DMU quickly recognised the interplay of CircKit’s various modules and how they can support their syllabus. They saw the bigger opportunity, and in doing so are setting a new benchmark for what industry-ready fashion education can look like." - Joe Darwen, Founder CEO, CircKit.
Beyond sustainability theory: the practical skills and tools that translate from campus to career
For DMU students, CircKit integration moves sustainability from a subject to be studied to a discipline to be practised. Working inside a live platform, students will build confidence with circularity terminology, get hands-on with design-stage impact decisions, and explore compliance through realistic scenarios rather than slide decks, developing a sharper sense of how supply chain and product design choices carry real implications downstream.
What makes CircKit distinct is that it’s built around three drivers that students learn to balance together:
- Commercial: The north star in any business decision, what makes circularity viable, not just virtuous.
- Compliance: The regulatory drivers, from Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) to Digital Product Passports (DPPs), that increasingly mandate action.
- Climate: The ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) upside and environmental gains that follow when commercial and compliance align.
By learning to navigate all three in tandem, students can understand circularity not as a constraint on design, but as a commercial and creative opportunity - exactly the mindset employers are looking for.
Future-proof education. Future-proof the industry.
The next generation of fashion leaders will only be as prepared as the institutions that teach them. CircKit gives universities, like De Montfort, a flexible way to integrate real industry tools into their programmes, with workspaces that can be shaped around specific learning needs and outcomes. With a growing cohort of pioneering universities and fashion schools embedding the platform, further partnerships are to be announced soon.
Interested in CircKit for your programme? Learn more or book a call with the Client Success Team to discuss timelines, options and next steps.
Photo credit: Vogue
Further Reading:
High-End Fashion No More Durable Than Fast Fashion, Report Discovers by Brooke Roberts-Islam - Forbes
Your stuff is actually worse now by Izzie Ramirez - Vox
Is Chanel's 'Absolute Luxury' Push Working? by Robert Williams - Business of Fashion
As a Global Recession Looms, Quiet Luxury Returns by Chantal Fernandez - Business of Fashion
What the Quiet Luxury Trend Means for Sustainability by Sarah Kent - Business of Fashion
Right to repair: Making repair easier and more appealing to consumers - European Parliament
