Fashion DNA is a series of British Council programmes supporting emerging fashion industries and raising awareness of their design talent while creating an understanding of their local context to people in the UK.

The programmes cover everything from business support to fashion image-making and aims to increase local skills and capacity to create a more sustainable and stable fashion industry. In an increasingly globalised world where fast fashion prompts homogenisation in fashion, Fashion DNA encourages designers to consider their cultural heritage, local traditions and crafts skills, personal identity and how these are represented in their design and communicated globally. The programme aims to instil cultural value in fashion.

A focus on skills will highlight design excellence and innovation to demonstrate that fashion is a design discipline as well as a manufacturing industry and that it requires technical skill and rigour.  Fashion DNA also intends to develop professional skills in other aspects of the industry such as communication, production and management. This approach, focusing both on the business of fashion and the culture of fashion, will create a positive economic, social and cultural value for it internationally.