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General Description

This is an ideal career for a creative thinker. As a fashion designer, your job is to create new styles and designs and to produce new labels for clothing and accessories. You may start new trends, influencing the aspirations of thousands of image-conscious people across the globe;  or you may simply adapt pre-existing designs and fabrics to local or specialised conditions.

Career Advice - Fashion Designer Career

The primary markets for fashion design are haute couture, designer ready-to-wear and high street fashion but you may specialize in a paricular market (such as sportswear or children’s wear), or a particular product type  (clothing, footwear, or accessories).

Your work includes planning and creating original and prototype garments, drawing designs of the items, selecting materials and determining manufacturing details, liaising with suppliers and manufacturers, producing clothing samples, and approving complete product. Fashion designers research and analyse trends in fashion. As it takes time to bring products into production, it is necessary to pre-empt the direction of popular styles, colours, and fabrics.

What you do every day

A work day as a fashion designer will largely depend on the nature of your employer and your chosen specialization. You will undertake a range of tasks, including researching current fashion trends and predicting the direction of future styles; visualising an idea and producing a sketch either by hand or with computer-aided design software; determining popular fabrics, colours, and styles; sourcing, selecting and buying fabrics; choosing materials and creating a prototype; making adjustments; and supervising the production process.

You may liaise with the marketing and finance team, perform business administration tasks, and plan clothing ranges. Adapting existing designs for mass production may be another task, as might be negotiating with customers and suppliers. Depending on your job position, you may be provided with a brief, specifying things like colour and fabric, and have to develop a product from this information.

Personality that best fits this career

Fashion design requires strong artistic, creative, and textile skills, and an aptitude for computer-aided design (AutoCAD). You will need the ability to turn abstract ideas and concepts into concrete designs, which entails accurate and detailed technical drawing skills. A keen awareness of current and emerging fashion trends is important, along with imagination and a flair for creativity. 

Communication and interpersonal skills are important, since you will have to convey your design idea to your clients or colleagues. You will often be dealing with suppliers and manufacturers, who need precise and comprehensive instructions. You may go through multiple design stages, redrafting and making alterations, and so patience and problem- solving skills are necessary. During the design process, you will need to concentrate and stay organised, and to manage your time effectively.

The ability to manage a project, working either independently or in a team is a vital skill. Considering the tough competition in this industry, you will need ambition, motivation and dedication to succeed. In terms of self-employment, business skills are important. Overall, you will need confidence in your ability, judgement and your own appearance.

Best thing about this career

The best aspect of being a fashion designer is the freedom to be creative, imaginative and original. You experience the pride and satisfaction of seeing your imagined designs come to life. Your creativity can impact others and start a trend, globally. Image that - what a blast. You will generally be flat out as two projects will never be the same, and this brings constantly challenging and varied work.

Worst thing about this career

All designers experience creative blockages. Under the pressure of deadlines, you may find it difficult to think of original designs. Wondering when, or even whether, you are going to be paid can be an issue. The fashion industry is constantly changing so when designing you need to be able to predict and pre-empt emerging trends.

Finding success within this competitive field can be difficult. You may spend years struggling on low wages and uninspiring jobs to get any kind of recognition. At times it will be hard to maintain hope in the face of uncertainty and disappointment.