How To Become A Fashion Designer

There are basically three ways to start your fashion career. One, go to school, get a Bachelor of Fine Arts and an accredited university or college.

Put your resume and portfolio together and look for a job. Number two: Start your own business. Number 3:Become a freelancer and work on project-by-project basis for a variety of companies. Now, those last two options.

You can definitely go to school to start, but you don't need to, but you do need to educate yourself, and that's where this post comes in. I've put together a study plan for you, and this planresembles many American fashion school programs, which is what I'm familiar with, and I'm going to include something schools don't talk about enough.

In my opinion, and my opinions are based on having graduated from a nationally ranked school, having worked in the industry for many years and then having taught at another nationally ranked university for over five years.

And this post will outline what you need to study, why you should study it, and how much you have to study it. I have not put these topics in order of importance. I have tutorial posts for a lot of these areas of study, but not everything.

Please check the description box for links and info on the books I'll be going over in this post, and I've also included some links to podcasts that I think are educational. A Note about my book recommendations: I taught a variety of classes in university, but only ever use two books in my classes: the one I suggest on color theory and the one I suggest on human anatomy.

When I was in school myself, my teachers didn't use a ton of books either, so I have a lot more tutorial posts than book recommendations. Okay, onto the subject. subject, one again in no particular order.

Design Process – What Is It All About?

First, Design. Some people will think I'm bubbling over with ideas. I have all the designs in my head already. Okay, that's a good start, but that's not everything. The way I teach design process is about taking those ideas and developing them, redefining them, creating whole collections.

And by learning processes and merging it with your own methods and ideas, you can create even more ideas and more often teach yourself how to recognize good design and to work around creative blocks–all kinds of things that make you a better, more wellrounded, well-honed design machine. At your average American fashion school, a student will take four to six design classes before they graduate, and they are, on average, two to three design projects per class. Each project is from inspiration to colors, fabric design, and final boards.

And yes, that is eight to 18 projects, and that is a lot of projects, and I encourage you to explore different seasons, different color stories, different kinds of customers, different price points, and different clothing categories in all these projects. Why is studying color so important? Color is such an important factor in people's purchasing decisions.

There is an entire industry dedicated to color services. Okay, given everything else is perfect. If an item of clothing is not the perfect color for you, how often do you wear it? Did you even buy it? Every single art and design major studies color theory and I love this particular book because it has the theory, but also tons of examples of actual design applications in toys, in fashion, in graphics, all kinds of applications, and fashion schools typically do one or two semesters. freshman year, the first year.

But then you know we talk about color stories in design classes. You know every single class, every single project.

Fabrics is a Designer's True Medium

subject 3) If you have watched a lot of my posts and you know, I'm always banging on about the importance of designers knowing about fabrics, Listen, fabrics is a designer's true medium. You know, I get so many questions on you know, Zoe? What watercolor should I use? What marker should I use? And it's like it doesn't matter for designers, because our medium is actually fabric.

Pick any whatever alcohol-based, professionally grade marker and get to work and then go study fabrics. Okay, I took a year of textile science in school, but continue my education to this day. fabric and textile technology is the future of fashion, and I try to keep up with fabric news as much as I can. And Yeah, go watch the playlist, pick up these books, visit fabric stores, and you know.

Fabric, Fiber Content – What's Expensive?

Check out the fabric, check out the fiber content – it's usually listed at the end of the roll–and check out what is expensive. Feel things in your hands and listen. I know that retail prices and wholesale prices are different, but you know relative to each other. see what's expensive and see what is cheap, and you know. Check out what's expensive. What feels good in your hand. Look at how things wrinkle, how things fray, how things stretch. Go to clothing stores and feel the fabrics and take note of their fiber content. All those tags have the fiber content listed.

Sustainable Fashion and Textiles – A Fashion Designer Medium

study, study, and study; Fabric is a fashion designer medium. study it obsessively. My suggestion is with every new design project you work on. remember those eight to eighteen design projects. Deep dive into one new category of fabrics for each project. It may be you do a fall winter collection for moderately priced women's wear and deep dive into wools for that project.

Okay, and then you can roll your wools knowledge into your next one as you deep dive into another category. subject for sustainability; Sustainability encompasses ecofriendly materials and processes, as well as ethical and fair trade approaches to production and labor.

If you think this area of study is optional, you need to wake up. It is 2019 at the very least. There is nothing bad in waste less water, sending less crap to landfills, and treating workers better. Go watch my five ugly truths of fashion post. Sustainability is not taught in very many schools, but it should be.

These books are great places to start this one on sustainability and fashion and textiles. The second one focuses on zero waste or low waste pattern cutting, and they're really great. They're so full of information.

I have a post on sustainability and design. Start there. Read a chapter in the Sustainable Sustainability Fashion and Textiles book and apply them slowly to your design projects. Once you've covered the basics in your garment construction studies, start with the basic projects in the Zero Waste Book. The American Fashion podcast is not a sustainability fashion podcast, but focuses on many related topics in many of the episodes. So I've linked that below, also.

How to Draw Flats and Draw Flats

subject 5) Drawing and Illustration. I've listed my posts on this in three categories: figure drawing, clothes on bodies, and fashion illustration with markers and watercolor. Okay, so at this point you need to think about your goals.

Okay, if you want to start your own business, you don't need to learn how to draw a ton. Okay, you do not need to be a master fashion illustrator to run your own business. My recommendation: Buy my figure templates at my Etsy store, Watch my drawing clothes on body series and practice the basics of communicating designs quickly and efficiently. That's really what you need.

and more importantly, flats. Learn how to draw flats. I'll go more into that in the technical design section. But yeah, business owners, you need to learn how to do flats. If you want to get a job at another company or startpursuing a freelance career, you know. Set up an online portfolio as a designer to get attention and jobs. You need to learn how to illustrate so you can attract attention.

My old department chair, she used to say, "Love, Illustration, starts conversations, and it does because we're we we buy into the visually appealing." I mean even restaurants like we eat with our eyes. Everything is about like the beautiful, beautiful presentation.

To start off with subject (6), technical design–a-ka product development–which means drawing flats, learning how to spek out garments, and how to create a tech pack off a template. Flats, flat drawings. They are basically drawings of clothes as they would appear if you laid them flat on the floor or on a table. posts, book recommendations, and listings to my flats.

How to Learn How to Draw Flats in Adobe Illustrator

templates and tech pack templates are below. Of course, you can make your own templates. You don't have to buy mine, but you know I already made them. For every design project you do, you must do flats of every garment. I suggest you practice creating tech packs for a few garments for each project. This is how you bring your ideas to life. This is a process you need to learn to make actual garments.

And for those of you who are freelancers, I absolutely promise you, there are way more paying gigs for people who can draw good flats in Adobe Illustrator, for people who can create good tech packs, and there are even more gigs for beautiful fashion illustration actually than straight-up design. Very few people are looking for help in the actual creative process.

Okay, because most people want to do the designing themselves, and they'll pay other people to do the things they don't know how to do or don't want to do. Subject 7) Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop Learning. These programs are a must in the current fashion industry. People ask me all the time if I would recommend any alternative programs, and yes, I have heard of some.

But the thing is, Adobe products are the industry standard. So you know I wouldn't recommend people learn another program just to have to learn Adobe. You know later on, anyway, when they get a job or a client insists on it, which it's inevitable. Okay, and I know, procreate is becoming popular as a digital drawing tool, but procreate is compatible with Adobe. So that's fine.

You will need to learn Adobe Illustrator to draw flats at the very minimum. You need to create your flats in Illustrator to insert them into your tech packs and into your line sheets. Basic Photoshop Skills–I mean this day and age.

It's like knowing Microsoft Word and Excel is like these computer skills that you need for a huge variety of scenarios. I have some posts to get started. I don't have a ton. I recommend Robin Schneider's channel, which I've linked below, for more lessons. Robin, as you may know, has guest lectured on this channel. She makes you know she's a great teacher.

She teaches at my alma mater, Otis College of Art and Design, and that has her own lessons. On Linda, aka LinkedIn learning, she's great. subject 8) – By this I mean pattern, writing, and draping and sewing. This is another area where the level of learning depends on what kind of designer you want to be. I explore this more in depth in my post. Do designers need to learn how to sw?

Basically, I strongly suggest you learn some pattern, draping and sewing basics so you can speak intelligently with your sample making team and production facilities. If you start your own line, do you need to learn garment construction?

Learn How to Cut Patterns and Cut Patterns

Okay, the thing is, the more you know, the more control you have over your product. Okay, another very important aspect of learning, construction and quality, is to go shopping in person. Okay, if you don't want to learn how to cut patterns or so, what you absolutely must do is visit stores in person.

Online shopping will not help you. go to stores. Look at the quality of the construction of the clothes, the quality of the fabrics, feel them. Look at the colors and look at the stitching. Look at the insides, how well it's been lined, what materials they use for lining.

You know how good the pockets are. You all know how I feel about pockets, okay? and then look at the price and think about whether you think the price Reflects the quality. Yeah, if you can try things on. If you can't, maybe take a friend. You know that's also good. When you're working on your design projects, Okay, let's go back to that fall winter, moderately priced women's wear with a lot of wool fabrics. Okay, when you're working on that design project, I want you to go to a store, and I want you to go look at a lot of wool coats and jackets, and suits and pants, and all that.

How Much Do You Learn to Be a Fashion Designer?

and and check out the fabrics, check out the construction, check out what they're doing with their linings and their pockets, and all these things. and check out the pricing.

Check out what is being done at the price point that you are designing at and take all those notes home and apply that to make your own design project better. On the flip side of that, you know there are so many boundaries, creative boundaries you can push, learning how to draft patterns and drape.

And so, and you know, people think you can only design with sketches, but tons of people preferdraping to design. Madeline V&A is one. The more you learn about construction, the more avant garde of a designer you can be pushing the boundaries of creativity. So again, this category, How much you learn, is really about what kind of designer you want to be. subject apparel manufacturing and business practices; production.

You know Distribution and you know if you're going to start your own line. This is so important. Okay, everyone wants to be a fashion designer and, you know, want to see their own name on that label. But it's not all about designing cute things. So much of it is production, sales, and distribution, ordering boxes.

Like if you're going to start your own line, you should watch all these posts and pick up these books, and also pick up a book on business law for whatever city, state, province, country you're going to set your business up in. okay, all designers should have a cursory understanding of the production and business parts of fashion, even if your role isn't especially in production. But for business owners this is really important. Subject: 10.

fashion and costume history; Most schools require a few art history courses, and most schools require a basic costume history course, and some schools even have electives in this area like Hollywood costume history. I think you should study the basics of 20th century fashion history, like what were the major trends of the 70s and what were the main silhouettes in the 60s, because this is the kind of stuff that is practically expected.

This is common, you know, expected to be common knowledge for anyone working in fashion today. Whether you're a designer, a stylist, a journalist, Okay, you should just know this. Okay, anything older than that, I feel you can study on a project-by-project basis.

Okay, and don't forget countries and cultures outside your own. I love this book that I'm flipping through on the screen because it gives more or less equal coverage to the cultures all over the world, because often costume history books can be rather eucentric. I do not have any fashion history posts. If you want some posts on 20th century fashion history, drop me a comment below.

For those of you panicking about the sheer volume of work I just throw in your face, don't remember this amount of work is equal to four years at a fashion school. No one is expecting you to be able to study everything in a few months, especially if you're working a day job while studying.

I also get a bunch of people asking me, Zoe, what is the bare minimum you need to learn to be a fashion designer? I just posted the bare minimum in this post. If you are running your own business, you know for everything that you don't know, that you don't study, that you don't do. You have to pay someone else to do it. That's the reality. No judgment. You just need to figure out how much money you have or how willing you are to just do things by trial and error.

Freelance Fashion Designer – Every Skill You Learn Limits Your Creativity

If you want to be a freelance fashion designer, every skill you learn is a skill you can offer clients and make money from, and, of course, the opposite. Every skill you don't learn, you are limiting the services you can offer and make money from.

Every skill you don't learn limits your creativity, because all these skills are connected. I haven't even covered all the wonderful subjects within the fashion umbrella you can explore, like learning embellishments like embroidery and bedding, learning textile, dying and print design, all kinds of fabric manipulation, all things that can help you stand out as a designer. Because I wanted to stick to the basics of this post. All right, and that's it.

Please give this post a thumbs up if you learned something new today. Share this post with everyone you know who's considering a career as a fashion designer. Subscribe, hit the little gray notification bell, and remember to keep your comments respectful to me and to each other. Check the description box for post links and info on books. Good luck with your studies and I will see you in the next post.