It is not unknown that there are a lot of aspiring fashion designers in the world – people who would kill to get into a good fashion school and have their careers take off from there.
The reasons might be different for everybody. Some common conceptions are that people interested in fashion are people who have a general interest in dressing up, people who are fond of glamour, people who think it’s the easiest way out. The fourth category, however, comprises of those who have a die-hard passion for fashion and an insatiable desire to create.
This post is directed towards all the kinds of people I listed above though I think the last category would benefit the most from it.
Firstly, fashion design is not ‘easy.’ It’s far from easy. It’s labour intensive, maddening, days and nights of hard work put in. You need to come up with work consistently, and you need to burn the midnight oil to come up with great work.
I would like to explain the nature of the work below:
There are two main parts to a fashion design course; one is the design process and the other is pattern making and garment construction.
1. The design process kicks off with you taking an inspiration. You can either be inspired by a tangible object (something which you can touch and has a physical presence) or by something intangible (feelings, stories, philosophies, etc.).
2. You need to research every detail about your chosen inspiration. I am not kidding, look at every little detail you can find.
3. The next step is to choose one aspect from your research and take it forward to build a concept. Suppose I was inspired by flowers. Flowers bloom, they have symmetry, they are colourful. The concept could be symmetry, so my garments are likely to have symmetrical details, garment components and silhouettes. Also, the forms that will be seen in the garments will be taken from these flowers.
4. Once the concept has been built, the next step is to start exploring. We explore with surfaces and silhouettes. Silhouettes are the contours or the shape of the garment, how it will fall on the body. These are explored either by sketching or draping.
5. Form generation is done prior to exploring silhouettes. Here you take the flower, break it down into several parts and recreate it according to your chosen concept. You then take forms you created and out them into silhouettes.
One idea is to see how certain forms mimic certain garment components. For example, half a petal could resemble half a side of a peter pan collar.
6. As and when you are doing this, you also explore with your surfaces. Exploring with surfaces refers to exploring with surface treatments of the fabrics, which can include various types of dyeing, fabric manipulations, embroideries, embellishments and different types of printing.
These will be influenced by your concept. The silhouettes and the fabrics will come together to form your garments and your final ensembles. You need to place them in ways which communicate your inspiration as well as look aesthetic. You also need to decide your colours alongside, which too will come from your concept and inspiration.
7. You also have to take care of finding out what your market is, i.e. which are the brands or designers that are your competitors. Who your client is and also what are the trends that are going to be in next season, so that you are up to date and so that people look forward to buying your clothes. At the end of the day, a collection has to sell.
The more depth that you put into your market, client and trend research, and the more aware you are likely and the more specific your collection can be.
8. Then comes the process of making your range plan. Prior to deciding the final range, i.e. the final five or ten garments that you are going to produce, you explore with various options for range plans in which you see different combinations of different garments.
A range plan usually consists of fashion figures with your designs on them along with the chosen fabrics for each garment and flat sketches of those garments. (Flat sketches are sketches of the garments if they were laid flat where all seams, stitch lines and design details are visible).
The range plan can be drawn by hand or done on the computer.
By now you know the whole design process. Oh, and along with this you also need to calculate all your costs so that later you can decide your markup accordingly!
9. The pattern making and garment construction stage is as labour intensive as the stage I described above. You need to take your designs and create patterns for them according to the size given by your college.
There are books for patterns in which you have exact steps on how to make a pattern for basic designs. Before you proceed to make your final garment, you need to make a toile (i.e. the very same garment in a cheaper fabric called muslin) to check the fit and fall of your design. The next step is to make your final garment.
10. It doesn’t end here. Once you are done making your final garments, you need to arrange for a photo-shoot of your final garments, which ideally should bring out your concept and the mood of the collection.
The last step to all of this is laying out and arranging your portfolio.
That’s the amount of work that goes into every single design project! And to get it perfect, you need to work day and night.
Secondly, you already know it’s not easy, neither is it glamorous. The only things that are likely to be glamorous can be your garments. You will be far from glamorous.
However, your perseverance and dedication should know no bounds. You will need both to get ahead.
Lastly, if you really love the work, if you really love to create and design and you actually do love fashion, it will all be worth it!
Note: This article was first published on the author’s blog.
Featured image for representative purpose only.
Featured image source: University of the Fraser Valley/Flickr.
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