The Fashion Industry is fascinating and complex. Fashion is a long-term, ongoing process that requires many different areas of expertise before a garment reaches your hands. These different areas of expertise all come with specialized skill sets ranging from creative to analytical. Are you considering a career in fashion and wonder where you might be a good fit based on your strengths? The fashion industry has many different emphasis, but some of the major ones include: Buying and Merchandising, Creative Design, Technical Design and Production.
Creative Design - The role of a Creative Designer is typically what people think about when they think of a Fashion Designer. They are responsible for trend research and creative styles concepts. The ability to forecast trends is a skill. A Creative Designer should have technical knowledge when it comes to design and fabrication.
Technical Design - Engineers of design that take the creative concept and bring it to life. In smaller companies, you can see a designer doing a bit of both of these, but as the companies scale, people will specialize in one of these. Technical Designers have strengths in patterning, fitting, fabrications and notions. They create the "blueprints" of garments.
Production - Receives the garment plans from the Technical Designer to begin sourcing materials. Often times this person will handle costing, negotiation and working directly with Manufacturing and Quality Control. They typically are great with meeting deadlines and very good with numbers.
Buying and Merchandising - Fashion Buyers are responsible for working with brands to select the styles for the season that they will offer to their customers. Merchandisers create the planograms for a physical or web store to showcase all of the styles of the season in an aesthetic way.
These are just four of the major emphasis in the Fashion Industry. There are also opportunities in Finance, Marketing, Quality Control, Modeling, etc.
If you're considering fashion my suggestion is to take a college tour, talk to an advisor, industry professional, volunteer, intern or gain retail experience.
Looking to gain hands on experience in the Boise, Idaho Fashion Industry? Consider joining our team. Send your resume to careers@voxclothing.com.
Author: Erica Becker, Creative Director.