Textile and Fashion Design

Anybody who has ever walked down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California or down Park Avenue in New York City has been exposed to fashion design at its best.

Briefly stated, fashion design is artistic creativity applied to the design of clothing and accessories created within the standard of desirability prevalent in a given time period.

While it applies to both men’s and women’s clothing, it is considerably more applicable to female attire than to male clothing.

What do fashion designers do?

Fashion designers ‘envision’ artistic creations and render them in a series of drawings from which the initial samples are made. Some high-fashion designers function as independent contractors for individual clients; others cater to specialty stores or high-fashion department stores. They create both original garments and those that comply with an established trend. The greater majority of fashion designers, however, work for mass-market apparel manufacturers and design men’s, women’s and children’s garments. These are garments with labels such as Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and others. This activity defines the overall fashion design market which is professionally separated into three distinct segments called Haute Couture, Ready-to Wear and Mass Market designs. Fashion design features complete collections too.

The fashion design industry isn’t limited to individual designs.

In some cases, especially in the pricey high-fashion segment or haute couture, designers develop complete ‘themed’’ collections based upon time periods, colors, history, fabrics, etc. Collections are planned and carefully researched so that every item complements the others. In many cases, they are well-kept secrets until released at a fashion show because the competition for this high-priced ‘niche’ market is intense. There are four main steps to designing a new garment:

• Different designers create the fashion design in different ways. Most start with a sketch on paper. Others drape fabric on a dress stand or mannequin and begin to fold, tuck and pin until the ‘big’ idea comes forth. Still other fashion designers adapt their own ideas from the successes of previous seasons and create their own patterns. This gives certain continuity to a fashion house’s products.
• The trial-version garment, called a toile or muslin, is generated from a rough paper pattern or 2-D plan of the garment and then made by a skilled sewing machine operator from a plain-colored fabric. This sample is then placed on a dress stand to see how it fits and hangs.
• The card pattern is made as soon as the fashion designer is satisfied with the fit of the muslin or toile. Once the designer is satisfied, the design is then shown to a professional pattern maker that prepares a finished, working version of the pattern out of card. This is a very precise job that requires a great amount of care because the ‘fit’ of the pattern depends upon his accuracy.
• The finished garment is then made from the proper fabric that the fashion designer selected.

This same four-step process is followed throughout the fashion design industry.

How do fashion designers work?

In the fashion design industry, designers work in three fundamental ways. These are freelancing, working in-house for one fashion house and by setting up their own company where they can sell their designs under their own label. Most salaried fashion designers earn between $14,000 and $95,000 per year. Today, freelancing is a growing segment as fashion houses adopt outsourcing as a method of controlling costs and gaining designer versatility.