Fashion Design School: How to Learn the Art and Business of Fashion
Fashion designers, like most professionals, experienced big changes with the advent of the Internet. For many fashion designers, the change brought great things. Before the Internet, fashion designers had to wait for department stores or shops to buy their designs, and then sell them. Today, with online storefronts, fashion designers can bypass the middleman and sell directly to customers. This can increase your chances to get your fashions out and can increases profits.
Online Storefronts of Fashion Designers
For emerging fashion designers, online shops are an excellent way to gain customers. And opportunities today go well beyond eBay. Websites like Smashingdarling.com, Etsy.com, and Modcloth.com provide the perfect marketplace for emerging artists such as fashion designs. Such websites not only offer exposure, but also provide excellent tools for fashion designers to tout their stuff:
- Name cataloging: These Web sites organize your fashion designs by label, which means if a customer likes something of yours on the site, it should be easy for her/him to find your other designs.
- Photos: With professional-looking photos, consumers will get a beautiful introduction to your designs.
- Customer reviews +popularity rankings: Customer feedback provides invaluable marketing information for fashion designers, and goes hand-in-hand with popularity rankings in helping your designs gain momentum.
- Social media: As with the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, and similar networking sites have made big differences for independent artists like fashion designers.
Yet, as great as this exposure could be, it could be disastrous if you are not ready for it. Rushing into selling artists' designs before they are ready can lead to disappointment and failure. Attending an accredited fashion design college can help you hone your creative and business skills and prepare you for the marketplace.
Fashion is an Art and Business: Learn Both at Fashion Design Schools
If your art is not very good, your business could suffer. If your business skills are not good, your business could also suffer. You need both artistic and business skills to succeed. You can hone your art and master business skills through an associate's degree or bachelor's degree from an accredited fashion design college.
At both levels, your courses might include any of the following:
- History of fashion
- Pattern making
- Fashion journalism
- Sustainable design
- Fashion merchandising and marketing
- Fashion drawings
Generally, it takes two years to complete an associate's degree and four years to complete a bachelor's degree. A bachelor's degree allows more time for additional courses in business, such as trend forecasting and communication, as well as time for supervised designing. You might choose to begin with an associate's degree and see where that leads you. You can always work toward a bachelor's degree online while you hold down an entry-level job in fashion.
Fashion careers vary beyond fashion designer. In addition to fashion designers and pattern makers, fashion design schools can prepare you for a career as a product manager, fashion journalist, buyer, or store manager.
Whatever your fashion career goals, completing fashion design school can prepare you and introduce you to valuable contacts in the field.
