10 Steps to Become a Fashion Designer and Start Your Own Business
Fashion designing is one of the most happening and in-demand professions in the world of creative and artistic works. Starting from the retail market to fashion accessories, the fashion industry to the world of cinematography, commercial ad world to ramp modeling the demand for fashion designers is increasing rapidly. It is nowadays taken as a bright future and careerist option. Therefore many students while in their high schools start preparing for their fashion designing career.
Who is the Fashion Designer?
A fashion designer is a creative person who designs the creative layout of clothing’s and accessories which finds usage in a versatile field of real life as well as reel life, that is in the world of commercial television, cinema, modeling, etc. as well as in retail markets for normal people. A fashion designer can make use of typical skills and ability to create new and original designs of clothes along with a wide range of accessories, including jewelry to shoes. Therefore, looking at the job aspects of the business prospects which could be achieved with education in fashion designing has great scopes and prosperous career opportunities. Highly advanced creative software like CAD finds extensive usage in this field.
How to Become a Fashion Designer?
To become a successful fashion designer and start your own business, you need to seek extensive knowledge of this professional field as well as dedication and hard work. Here you will come across the ten detailed steps to achieve a successful business career in fashion designing. However, the journey is long and demands sincere efforts.
1 Seek Information
In order to achieve a career in fashion designing, at first, you need to know which courses to avail of, the minimum qualifications required to establish in this profession, the courses available for fashion designing, colleges and schools which offer them, the course duration, required expense to undergo course training, etc. Without these essential pieces of information, it is hard to step further ahead.
2 Start Preparation in High School
Many high schools nowadays offer extra curriculum courses on drawing, fashion designing, creative software courses which could essentially be helpful in creating a strong profile for your post-secondary education in fashion designing.
3 Degree in Fashion Designing
There are institutes that offer exclusive associate and bachelor’s degrees in fashion designing which is essential for a career in this profession. While these courses help you to develop your intermediate skills, knowledge about the industry, manufacturing of apparels, history of fashion, etc., there are other extra courses available too which help you master over other essential skills like that of pattern making, stitching, draping, material understanding, etc.
4 Internship
This is one of the vital steps to achieving a successful career ahead as well as an illuminating insight into the actual industry. As an intern, you can work in manufacturing units, or as a custom tailor or designing head in retail stores or manufacturing industries to obtain real-time experience of the market. You get to know more about the fabric, stitching methods, and use of different styles.
5 Search for a Job
An internship is just a part of the curriculum and cannot be considered a real job. You need to apply for a job in different companies, manufacturing companies, or even under direct high-end designers. According to the U.S. Bureau of Employment statistics, an almost 3% increase in the demand for fashion designers has been expected in 2015. In 2017 the margin has raised higher. Therefore, looking at the market demand for fashion designers of fresh talent has high scopes of a successful career.
6 Contacts
Those who aspire to have a bright career as a fashion designer as well as a business in fashion design need to build contacts in the fashion world. To start your business, you need to have a market to which you can approach to supply your designs. Without contacts, you cannot make a market for yourself.
7 Funding
Investment and funding are basic prerequisites for starting a business. Thus even if you are seeking to start a business in fashion designing, or start your apparel store or boutique fashion house, you need to have your funding ready. You can opt for:
- Funding from different companies for whom you can be the supplier.
- You can invest your own savings.
- You can arrange for loans.
8 Market Review
Before starting any business, it is important to do a market review and understand what the market is seeking. You need to understand if you want to do business with a retail market or for the fashion world; you also need to decide on your target customers.
9 Arrange Advertising
Starting a business, opening an office is not enough to gear up a successful business. You need to promote your business, bring it to the concern of your target consumers. You can apply different types of strategic advertising such as using banners, promotional print media ads. You can also use your previous contacts and send them invitations to be your customer or start the business with you.
10 Enhancing quality
Again yet another success mantra of businesses to concentrate on is offering high-quality material and work to the market. This works as an assurance that customers who deal with you once will come back for further services and products. You can also promote your quality and versatile range of work through the arrangement of exhibitions and shows of your design work.
Understanding any field or industry takes time and a lot of skills. If you can invest in both of them, you can undoubtedly achieve a great career generally and in the fashion business especially. However, since the fashion business deals with exclusive creativity, skilled labor, and unparalleled quality, you cannot compromise on any if you seek to attain a bright and prosperous career in fashion designing; and most importantly you need to stay with the trend, yet be unique in your designs.