How to become a Fashion Designer

314

£24,000/y

avg. starting salary

Is your career ‘so last year’? You should become a Fashion Designer… Fashion Designers create clothing and accessories, from individual items to fully-blown fashion ranges. They could work anywhere from high fashion labels or boutique fashion houses through to high-street and retail brands, and design for a number of demographics or specialise in a particular type of clothing (e.g. men’s, women’s, footwear, accessories etc.). Typical duties for a Fashion Designer could include:

Working to design briefs
Coming up with initial designs, either through sketching or computer-aided design (CAD)
Selecting appropriate fabrics, creating prototypes and producing mood boards
Estimating costs and presenting back to other areas around the business, such as sales, finance and marketing
Supervising the purchase of fabrics, and any other material needed
Overseeing production until the product is completed

To be a successful Fashion Designer, it almost goes without saying that an active interest in fashion (and/or an obsession) will be absolutely non-negotiable. Reading the occasional Vogue magazine and owning a pair of Ray-Bans will not quite cut-it. You need to live for the latest trends, and know what’s in, what’s out, what last season’s disaster was and what’s going to be the next big thing. Other key skills for a Fashion Designer include:

- Originality
- Creativity
- An eye for colour, form, texture and shape
- An appreciation of aesthetics
- Technical design skills, including pattern cutting, sewing and tailoring
- Commercial awareness

Junior Fashion Designer

Up to £24,000

Fashion Designer

Up to £40,000

Senior Fashion Designer

Up to £60,000

"The best thing about being a Fashion Designer is that I get to challenge myself to be creative every single day. I’ve only been in the industry for around three years, but already I’ve learned so much about fashion that I never dreamed possible. I’ve certainly come a long way since smuggling copies of Look and Glamour magazine into school to read in class. Yes, it can be tough and incredibly demanding work, and it’s not all Parisian catwalks and liaising with models, but it’s what I’ve always wanted to do and I couldn’t be happier to be there."

Get qualified

Many Fashion Designers will have a degree in their field. However, it is not necessarily a pre-requisite, and a qualification which covers the technical side of the industry may be enough to gain a lower-end entry-level position.

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