Fashion Design
Fashion design is artistic design of clothing and accessories created to fit with the cultural and social influences of the time period.
In some circumstances, leading designers go far afield to create a new standard that they hope will become established. Fashion design is different than costume design in that it’s primary product usually has a built-in one or two season obsolescence, where a season is given as spring/summer or fall/winter.
What do fashion designers do?
Fashion designers are the people who design clothing and accessories for women. A select group of these designers are self-employed and prepare designs for individual clients. Other fashion designers work for high-fashion department stores or specialty retailers. Designers create original and exclusive garments along with those that follow popular fashion trends. However, the majority of fashion designers work for apparel manufacturers and design men’s, children’s and women’s fashions for mass markets. Certain designer brands that have a name for their brand such as Ralph Lauren are most likely designed by a team that works under the direction of a designer/director.
What types of fashions do they design?
The fashion industry is broken down into three main categories, although there are sub-categories as well. These are Haute Couture, Ready-to-Wear and Mass Market. They are described as follows:
Haute Couture that is French for high needlework, is a protected term that can only be used by clothing manufacturers that meet the specific standards set down by the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture. A couture garment is supposed to be made for a particular customer and is fabricated with an expensive, high-quality fabric and put together with extremely careful attention to detail. Look and fit are considered more important than cost and the best fashions are one-of-a-kind creations.
Ready-to-Wear clothes are actually a meld between haute couture and the mass-market types. While they are not made for a specific customer, they still feature care in the selection of cut and fabric. The quantities produced are not large so that they retain some exclusivity. And they are considered rather costly. Fashion houses generally present collections of ready-to-wear garments for each season during a period called Fashion Week.
Mass-Market accounts for the greatest number of sales in the industry. It serves a wide range of customers by producing garments in many sizes. These garments are made from relatively inexpensive fabrics that are creatively applied to produce affordable fashion. Mass-market fashion designers follow many of the trends set by famous names in high fashion in designing mass-market apparel. Simpler production techniques using machinery are utilized in addition to inexpensive materials. Today, many high-end designers are also designing for the mass-market sector in order to enlarge their customer bases.
Fashion designers produce collections too
One of the most difficult challenges that face fashion designers is predicting future trends. To accomplish this, they must constantly keep abreast of what others in the industry are doing as well as constantly read fashion-forecasting publications. They also count on their own customers to see the styles that succeeded and failed in prior seasons. Fashion designers must also use their imaginations for new ideas that can be translated into garment collections for the coming season.
