Fashion design
Fashion design is the art of applying design, aesthetics, clothing construction, and natural beauty to clothing and its accessories. It is influenced by diverse cultures and different trends and has varied over time and place. "A fashion designer creates clothing, including dresses, suits, pants, skirts, and accessories like shoes and handbags, for consumers. They can specialize in clothing, accessory, or jewelry design, or may work in more than one of these areas."
Fashion designers
Fashion designers work in a variety of ways when designing their pieces and accessories such as rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings and clothes. Due to the time required to put a garment out on the market, designers must anticipate changes to consumer desires. Fashion designers are responsible for creating looks for individual garments, involving shape, color, fabric, trimming, and more.Fashion designers attempt to design clothes that are functional as well as aesthetically pleasing. They consider who is likely to wear a garment and the situations in which it will be worn, and they work with a wide range of materials, colors, patterns, and styles. Though most clothing worn for everyday wear falls within a narrow range of conventional styles, unusual garments are usually sought for special occasions such as evening wear or party dresses.
Some clothes are made specifically for an individual, as in the case of haute couture or bespoke tailoring. Today, most clothing is designed for the mass market, especially casual and everyday wear, which are commonly known as ready to wear or fast fashion.
Structure
There are different lines of work for designers in the fashion industry. Fashion designers who work full-time for a fashion house, as in-house designers, create designs owned by the company and may either work independently or as a part of a design team. Freelance designers who work for themselves sell their designs to fashion houses, directly to shops, or to clothing manufacturers. There are quite a few fashion designers who choose to set up their labels, which offers them full control over their designs. Others are self-employed and design for individual clients. Other high-end fashion designers cater to specialty stores or high-end fashion department stores. These designers create original garments, as well as those that follow established fashion trends. Most fashion designers, however, work for apparel manufacturers, creating designs of men's, women's, and children's fashions for the mass market. Large designer brands that have a 'name' as their brand such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Justice, or Juicy are likely to be designed by a team of individual designers under the direction of a design director.Designing a garment
Garment design includes components of "color, texture, space, lines, pattern, silhouette, shape, proportion, balance, emphasis, rhythm, and harmony". All of these elements come together to design a garment to create visual interest for consumers.Fashion designers work in various ways, some start with a vision in their head and later move into drawing it on paper or on a computer, while others go directly into draping fabric onto a dress form, also known as a mannequin. The design process is unique to the designer and it is rather intriguing to see the various steps that go into the process. Designing a garment starts with patternmaking. The process begins with creating a sloper or base pattern. The sloper will fit the size of the model a designer is working with or a base can be made by utilizing standard size charting.
Three major manipulations within patternmaking include dart manipulation, contouring, and added fullness. Dart manipulation allows for a dart to be moved on a garment in various places but does not change the overall fit of the garment. Contouring allows for areas of a garment to fit closer to areas of the torso such as the bust or shoulders. Added fullness increases the length or width of a pattern to change the frame as well as fit of the garment. The fullness can be added on one side, unequal, or equally to the pattern.
A designer may choose to work with certain apps that can help connect all their ideas together and expand their thoughts to create a cohesive design. When a designer is completely satisfied with the fit of the toile, they will consult a professional pattern maker who will then create the finished, working version of the pattern out of paper or using a computer program. Finally, a sample garment is made up and tested on a model to make sure it is an operational outfit. Fashion design is expressive, the designers create art that may be functional or non-functional.
Technology within fashion
Over the years, there has been an increase in the use of technology within fashion design. Iris van Herpen, a Dutch designer, incorporated 3D printing in her Crystallization collection.Software can aid designers in the product development stage. Designers can use artificial intelligence and virtual reality to prototype clothing. 3D modeling within software allows for initial sampling and development stages for partnerships with suppliers before the garments are produced. Product managers can use product lifecycle management software to develop multiple items to multiple product lines to assist in planning, assigning, and tracking tasks from concept to completion.
History
Modern Western fashion design is often considered to have started in the 19th century with Charles Frederick Worth who was the first designer to have his label sewn into the garments that he created, although tailors had sewn in labels with their name since at least 1828. Before the former draper set up his maison couture in Paris, clothing design and creation of the garments were handled largely by anonymous seamstresses. At the time high fashion descended from what was popularly worn at royal courts. Worth's success was such that he was able to dictate to his customers what they should wear, instead of following their lead as earlier dressmakers had done. The term couturier was in fact first created in order to describe him. While all articles of clothing from any time period are studied by academics as costume design, only clothing created after 1858 is considered fashion design.It was during this period that many design houses began to hire artists to sketch or paint designs for garments. Rather than going straight into manufacturing, the images were shown to clients to gain approval, which saved time and money for the designer. If the client liked their design, the patrons commissioned the garment from the designer, and it was produced for the client in the fashion house. This designer-patron construct launched designers sketching their work rather than putting the completed designs on models.
Types of fashion
Garments produced by clothing manufacturers fall into three main categories, although these may be split up into additional, different types.Haute couture
Until the 1950s, fashion clothing was predominately designed and manufactured on a made-to-measure or haute couture basis, with each garment being created for a specific client. A couture garment is made to order for an individual customer, and is usually made from high-quality, expensive fabric, sewn with extreme attention to detail and finish, often using time-consuming, hand-executed techniques. Look and fit take priority over the time and cost of production. Due to the high cost of each garment, haute couture makes little direct profit for the fashion houses, but is important for prestige and publicity.Ready-to-wear (prêt-à-porter)
Ready-to-wear, or prêt-à-porter, clothes are a cross between haute couture and mass market. They are not made for individual customers, but great care is taken in the choice and cut of the fabric. Clothes are made in small quantities to guarantee exclusivity, so they are rather expensive. Ready-to-wear collections are usually presented by fashion houses each season during a period known as fashion week or fashion month. This takes place on a citywide basis and occurs twice a year. The main seasons of Fashion Week include spring/summer, fall/winter, resort, swim, and bridal.Half-way garments are an alternative to ready-to-wear, "off-the-peg", or prêt-à-porter fashion. Half-way garments are intentionally unfinished pieces of clothing that encourage co-design between the "primary designer" of the garment, and what would usually be considered, the passive "consumer". This differs from ready-to-wear fashion, as the consumer is able to participate in the process of making and co-designing their clothing. During the Make workshop, Hirscher and Niinimaki found that personal involvement in the garment-making process created a meaningful "narrative" for the user, which established a person-product attachment and increased the sentimental value of the final product.
Otto von Busch also explores half-way garments and fashion co-design in his thesis, "Fashion-able, Hacktivism and engaged Fashion Design".
Mass market
Currently, the fashion industry relies more on mass-market sales. The mass market caters for a wide range of customers, producing ready-to-wear garments using trends set by the famous names in fashion. They often wait around a season to make sure a style is going to catch on before producing their versions of the original look. To save money and time, they use cheaper fabrics and simpler production techniques which can easily be done by machines. The end product can, therefore, be sold much more cheaply.There is a type of design called "kutch" originated from the German word kitschig, meaning "trashy" or "not aesthetically pleasing". Kitsch can also refer to "wearing or displaying something that is therefore no longer in fashion".
Income
The median annual wages for salaried fashion designers was $79,290 in May 2023, approximately $38.12 per hour. The middle 50 percent earned an average of $76,700. The lowest 10 percent earned $37,090 and the highest 10 percent earned $160,850. The highest number of employment lies within Apparel, Piece Goods, and Notions Merchant Wholesalers with a percentage of 5.4. The average is 7,820 based on employment. The lowest employment is within Apparel Knitting Mills at.46% of the industry employed, which averages to 30 workers within the specific specialty. In 2016, 23,800 people were counted as fashion designers in the United States.Geographically, the largest employment state of Fashion designers is New York with an employment of 7,930. New York is considered a hub for fashion designers due to a large percentage of luxury designers and brands.