Fashion
Fashion Design & Merchandising Career Overview
The fashion industry is fast-paced and highly competitive. Fashion professionals must think fast, be creative and have a good eye for fabrics, colors, and trends. A career in fashion design is a diverse field ranging from everyday sportswear to one-of-a-kind couture.
A solid education and training in fashion design is a great way to break in to the fashion industry. It is also important to understand that the industry requires that employees work their way up from the bottom to reach top. Building a solid reputation as a hard worker is essential to climbing up the rungs of the fashion ladder.
Fashion Training & Education
While an education cannot teach one to have an artistic eye for fashion, in the fashion industry it is nearly impossible to bypass fashion design school and get a job without a degree from either a 2 or 4 year institution.
In a two year institution, students receive either a certificate or a diploma. A degree in fashion design from a four-year institution will make you a competitive applicant for jobs in fashion design. Also, many successful fashion designers have advanced degrees including Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) and Masters (MA) in Fashion Merchandising.
In addition to traditional schooling, it is important to train in the technical skills related to design to provide you with a foundational working knowledge of fashion design. All designers should have basic tailoring skills. Additionally, they all should be able to sketch. The majority of successful fashion designers, no matter what their specialty, could perform the most basic garment making skills with ease.
Fashion Career & Salary Outlook
In fashion, there are many different opportunities for employment. This can range from working with fashion exporting companies to retail to fashion shows to couture. Within all of these different areas of the fashion industry, dozens of assistants, support staff and specialists are needed to make it work.
Like many competitive jobs, expect that your first job in fashion will be either as an assistant or an equivalent entry level position. Through hard work and getting yourself noticed, the possibility to advance exists! The fashion design industry employs over 15,000 people. The highest areas of employment are in New York and California. The national average of hourly pay in fashion design is $33.30. The average salary for fashion design is $69,270 annually. In New York, this average is slightly higher. The top 10% of earners make over $50 and hour or over $115,000 annually.
Career Fields/Specializations
Fashion Designer Career
Those that specializing in fashion design come up with the concepts and create sample designs. Junior designers assemble the first samples. Fashion designers have very strong drawing skills. Their drawings are a very important part of their trade as it is the medium by which they can show their designs to others in the fashion industry to show them how a certain product is going to look. The designer is involved in all areas of fashion design from start to finish.
Pattern Maker Career
Pattern makers are the most adept technically at fashion design.. It is up to the pattern maker to take the drawn design of an article of clothing and literally translate it into pieces of either paper or fiberboard that replicate the shapes of pieces of fabric needed to make an article of clothing. Because the pattern maker starts the transition from drawn design to actual production, pattern makers serve a very important role and often liaise between designers and manufacturers. There are not many pattern makers in the fashion design industry, but their role is a vital one for the success bringing a design to fruition.
Fashion Merchandiser Career
It is most important that the fashion merchandiser is spot on with trends and understanding what buyers are looking for. In addition to a strong knowledge of fashion trends, a fashion merchandiser is responsible for data regarding sales as well as the company's goals. The fashion merchandisers are also the ones who organize the collection and markets clothing to clients. The fashion merchandiser's success relies on a keen eye for fashionable trends, looks, and ability to crunch numbers.
Production Manager Career
The production manager is the head of the manufacturing processes of fashion design. The production manager is responsible for quality control. The production manager overseas all parts of the manufacturing, this includes the pattern cutting. Someone who is a production manager must be well versed in how to assemble clothing. Production managers are also responsible to manage all of the workers who are below him or her. This must be someone with good delegating skills, is well organized, and understands the foundations and complexities of how clothing is made.
Buyer Career
A typical buyer works for a department store or wholesale clothing suppliers. They also can work for showrooms or boutiques. A buyer is someone who represents a store or supplier and purchases clothing and accessories from fashion designers for their stores to carry or redistribute. A degree in fashion merchandising or a similar field is generally required for a job as a buyer. Additionally, experience in retail can be very helpful because a buyer should be someone who can anticipate what the customer wants. In addition to good trend spotting skills and interest in fashion, it is also important the buyer is a good negotiator and is very adept at budgeting and planning.
Technical Designer Career
Technical designers are the ones who move the process from the creative concepts into tangible products. Duties of a technical designer include coming up with prototypes of garments. Technical designers also grade garments and do spec sheets, which itemizes all of the different specifications necessary to produce the garment or accessory from the material used, to the type of machinery that will be used to make it.
