What Are the Work Hours for a Fashion Designer

This folio was developed as a resource for aspiring fashion pattern students and manner designers seeking general career information, grooming and instruction requirements, and job search assistance. The resources provided on this folio are not-commercial in nature and free to use. If yous take any career resource for mode designers you feel would exist of benefit to our visitors, please practice not hesitate to contact us with your recommendations.

To acquire more about launching or advancing a career in fashion design select a topic below.

• Career Overview
• Career Positions and Profiles
• Employment Information, Profiles and Statistics
• Salary and Wage Statistics
• Education and Training Requirements
• Accreditation
• Job Outlook
• Working Conditions
• Additional Resources

Career Overview

Way designers design dresses, shoes, and other vesture. They discover trends and supervise the development of new clothing lines. Vesture designers also coordinate the production of clothes for men, women, and children. Footwear designers design and coordinate the product of shoes and boots. Accessory designers pattern and coordinate the production of hats, glasses, belts, purses, and other accessories. Some fashion designers specialize in certain types of clothing for historic period groups, body types and commercial industries.

The typical duties performed by a fashion designer include:

• Follow trends in the manner industry and determine which designers are likely to appela to consumers in the hereafter
• Develop theme based article of clothing lines and collections
• Develop designs using calculator-aided programs
• Attend trade shows to follow trends, present design and notice fabrics
• Piece of work with other designers and merchandisers to create design prototypes
• Promote clothing lines and designs to retailers and consumers
• Oversee clothing designs from through concluding production

It normally takes 18-24 months to design and produce a new clothing line. Fashion designers begin the process by conducting research nearly fashion trends. They either conduct their own research or study reports published by style merchandise groups. These reports detail pop styles, fabrics, and colors. After conducting research, mode designers visit trade shows to obtain fabric samples.

After fabrics have been selected, initial designs are created with cheap materials, and models wear the designs to decide how the clothes fit. Afterwards the clothes accept been altered, sample designs constructed with the actual fabric are created and sent to potential buyers. Designers often market place their wearing apparel at way shows to get their designs and product in front of merchandizers and retail buyers.

Fashion designers now employ computer aided design engineering science (CAD) to develop and create their designs. Most designers still sketch their preliminary designs so employ CAD to expound on their designs. Designers tin can create their alterations on virtual models using CAD, saving them time and money.

Fashion designers working for large firms usually select colors and materials, create designs, and supervise the evolution team. These large firms often hire specialized tailors and pattern designers to industry their clothes. Designers working at smaller firms are responsible for designing wearable and patterns, besides as supervising clothing production.

Fashion designers employed past apparel wholesalers pattern dress for the masses. Self employed designers, also known as haute couture designers, design custom clothes for private clients (who are usually quite wealthy). Some designers design clothes for their ain stores or department stores. Others design clothes for television studios, movie studios, or theater productions. Costume designers conduct historical enquiry nigh the time period they are designing costumes for and and so supervise costume product.

Career Positions and Profiles

Beneath yous can acquire more about the most popular careers and positions within the field of manner design.

Mode Designer

Mode designers are involved from concept to end in the evolution and product of wearable lines. While a few designers are able to work their way up in the industry through on the job feel, these days a bachelor's caste is typically the minimum requirement for this position. Designers must take an indepth knowledge of manner blueprint concepts, sewing, dress design and garment structure, and be familiar with the different types of textiles and industry trends. Virtually designers are specialists. They may specialize in women's apparel, children's wear, or men's habiliment.

Assistant Designer

Asistant designers are precisely that, assistants. They aid fashion designers with every aspect of development and production of habiliment lines. Typical duties include developing sketches for designers to work from, preparing presentation marterials for shows and clothing demos, sourcing textile, etc. Assistant designers are not required to have a bachelor's caste, simply many practice. Banana designers oft work their style up to become designers.

Pattern Maker

As their name suggests, pattern makers create patterns and specifications for how each component of a garment should be manufactured and put together. Today, pattern makers oft use reckoner software, CAD and 3D imaging to create patterns and develop specifications. Pattern making skills can be learned on the task, by earning a specialized caste in fashion design, or through a technical grooming programme.

Fashion Merchandiser

Many aspiring style design students and aspiring designers end up migrating to a career in fashion merchandising. Merchandisers are typically upper-management and high level executives in apparel manufacturing who are responsible for determining which clothing lines, fashion and/or accessories a manfucturer should produce. They program, research, and determine which fashion trends a company should pursue. A bachelor'southward degree in way design, fashion merchandising, apparel production, or marketing is typically the minimum educational requirement for this position. Many companies who employ merchandiser prefer to hire candidates with MBAs. Merchandiser tin make anywhere from $55,000 to $110,000 a year - or more.

Fashion Buyer

Buyers plan sales, select trade to sell, toll vendor orders, and monitor inventory. Buyers are experts at budgeting. They're oftentimes given a stock-still budget and told to get all-time return they perhaps can. Buyer positions are competitive and typically take years to work into. In add-on to a bachelor's caste, buyers are typically required to complete on-the- job training sponsored by their employer and consummate an apprenticeship.

Assistant Buyer

In order to become a buyer, you must first become an assistant buyer. Assistant buyers help fashion buyers select trade, write and price orders, interact and negotiate with vendors, and plan and manage a budget. Most assistant buyers have a four year college degree. This position is likewise highly competitive as it is a stepping rock to becoming a full fledged heir-apparent.

Trade Director

Too known as Divisional Merchandise Managers (DMM), trade managers are responsible for supervising merchandise departments and fashion buyers. With a salary ranging from $l,000 to $150,000 a year, this position is 1 of the highest paid inside the fashion manufacture. To go a merchandise managing director, applicants must have a college degree and five to 10 years experience every bit a fashion buyer. Merchandise managers manage vendor relations, develop ownership teams, ensure consistent quality, and focus on making certain customers receive the value they expect and are paying for.

Design Manager

A design managing director's principal duty is to oversee color, trends, and fabric management for all production lines. They also manage design teams, supervise the manufacturing process and support marketing endeavors. Task duties include market analysis, tendency analysis, predicting future demand, product support and building material stories.

Manner Director

Fashion directors are responsible for having an intimate cognition of various market trends and using this noesis to develop constructive marketing and branding strategies, and navigating market trends. Mode directors do a fair amount of traveling and are required to nourish the industry's summit shows in Paris, London, Milan, and New York. Style directors must exist able forecast mode trends, have strong communication skills, and be experts in design and colour. They also develop fashion messaging strategies and manage buying teams.

Visual Merchandising Director

Visual merchandising directors work in retail and wholesale sectors of the mode industry promoting products, services and prototype. They dress manikins, develop visually appealing manner displays, and organize special events to promote brand awareness. They also supervise pattern and concept production, oversee thought presentation, and manage budgets. They must be experts in color and design, have the ability to manage budgets and be highly creative.

Fashion Editor

Fashion editors oversee the cosmos, development and presentation of content for fashion related magazines and publications. They're also responsible for putting together photograph shoots, managing teams, staying abreast of manufacture trends, choosing looks to feature, curating photography and deciding what should be published - and what shouldn't. They must have exceptional writing skills, be experts in fashion and photography, and have skillful interpersonal advice skills.

Employment Data and Statistics

Equally of May 2014, there were approximately 22,300 fashion designers employed in the U.s.. Of these, about half worked in wholesale and manufacturing, a 10th occupated corporate direction positions, and the remaining worked in specialized design and other related occupations. Between 2012 and 2020, the number of mode designers employed in the Usa is expected to decrease to 21,600 - due in large part to apparel manufacturing jobs moving overseas to more competitive markets.

The following is a breakdown of the industries employing the highest number of fashion designers, including employment numbers and wage information per industry.

Industry	Total employment	% idustry employment	Mean hourly manner	Mean annual wage
Dress and Merchant Wholesalers	7,400	5%	$34	$70,000
Apparel Manufacturing	2,850	2.v%	$twoscore	$83,000
Corporate Management	2,400	.eleven%	$43	$90,000
Specialized Design Services	ane,450	1.2%	$33	$68,500
Theater, Moving-picture show and Video	1,000	.three%	n/a	n/a

Geographic Profile for Psychology Occupations

The map beneath shows the states that employ the largest number of fashion designers, as well every bit concentration of fashion designers per state.

The chart below lists united states that employ the highest numbers of fashion designers, forth with the mean hour wage, annual mean wage and location quotient for each land.

State	Total employment	Location quotient	Mean hourly way	Mean annual wage
New York	seven,190	half-dozen.18	$39	$eighty,900
California	v,750	ii.88	$35	$73,300
Texas	500	.34	$29	$60,600
New Bailiwick of jersey	340	.66	$36	$74,100
Massachusetts	270	.61	$37	$76,900

The map below shows the location caliber for the way pattern manufacture across the United States. The location quotient is the ratio of the concentration of fashion blueprint professionals employed in a state to the national average concentration for the manufacture. A country with a location caliber greater than one indicates the state has a greater share of employment of fashion designers than the average. (Note: Data is not available for those states that are white.)

The chart below shows u.s.a. that have the highest concentration of jobs and location quotients for the fashion design industry.

State	Total employment	Location quotient	Mean hourly way	Mean annual wage
New York	7,190	6.ii	$39	$80,900
California	5,750	two.ix	$35	$73,300
Vermont	40	ane.08	$24	$49,000
New Hampshire	90	ane.04	$35	$73,500
Kansas	180	.99	$35	$55,000

Salary and Wage Statistics

Co-ordinate to the Agency of Labor Statistics, the median pay for fashion designers is roughly $63,000 a twelvemonth. As of 2014, l% of manner designers earned more $63k a twelvemonth while 50% earned less. The top 10% of fashion designers earn over $127,000 a year, witha few extremely successful designers making well into the half-dozen figures. The lowest ten percent of wage earners in this industry make less than $35,000 a year.

Every bit is the instance with well-nigh occupation, how much a way designer can earn is in fluenced past many factors, including experience, skill, reputation and employer. Until a style designer has substantial experience in the manufacture, their pay tends to be relatively low compared to other occupations that crave a bachelor's caste. Manner designers that receive a salary typically accept more than stable income than those who piece of work freelance, independent or as consultants. However, fashion designers who are able to develop their own make and clothing line can hitting information technology big!

The median annual pay for fashion designers in the top 5 industries/task sectors employing these professionals is equally follows:

Corporate and Enterprise Direction	$78,600
Specialized design services	$62,600
Apparel production	$62,400
Wearing apparel and merchant wholesaling	$60,600
Electronic markets and brokers	$58,000

The map below shows the annual mean wage for way designers past state every bit of May 2014.

The chart below lists the state with the highest hourly and annual hateful wage for fashion designers. When considering employment opportunities, yous should consider all factors including wage, location quotient, overall employment and cost of living.

State	Total employment	Location quotient	Hateful hourly way	Mean annual wage
New York	7,190	6.2	$39	$eighty,900
Massachusetts	270	.61	$37	$76,900
New Jersey	340	.66	$35	$74,100
California	five,750	2.9	$35	$73,300
New Hampshire	xc	1.04	$35	$73,500

The highest paying metropolitan areas for fashion designers include St. Louis, MO ($97,300/year), San Francisco, CA ($83,100/yr), NY-NJ Metro Area ($81,000/year), Portsmouth, NH ($78,500/yr), Oakland, CA ($77,800/yr), Boston, MA ($77,200/yr), Los Angeles, CA ($74,400/twelvemonth), Portland, ME ($72,000/yr) and Santa Ana/Anaheim, CA ($71,400). Again, the annual figures are based on Mean Wage. Actual figures may be higher or lower.

Education and Training

A bachelor'southward degree in fashion design or fashion merchandising is typically the minimum requirement for entry-level positions that will pb to career advancement opportunities within the industry. Fashion design programs teach students the ins and outs of fashion, design concepts, manufacture trends, analysis, textiles, fabrics and how to utilise computer-aided design (CAD) to develop way concepts and apparel designs.

Fashion pattern programs are instrumental in helping students develop a portfolio - a collection of designs that showcase the student's design abilities, experience and expertise. A skilful portfolio is the key to landing tiptop industry positions. Most employers will decide whether or non to utilize or hire a designer based on their portfolio.

In that location are but over 300 higher teaching institutions in the United States that offering art and pattern programs accredited by the National Association of Schoos of Arts and Design (NASAD). Nosotros recommend earning your degree in fashion design from a NASAD accredited institution. Many fashion design programs will crave application to (1) consummate prerequisite courses in art and pattern before existence admitted and/or (2) submit a small-scale portfolio that demonstrates their artistic and creative ability.

Most successful fashion designers worked their style up the ranks. Manner designers typically get started in the industry through an apprenticeship, internship or past working as an assistant for a while. Internships are particulary useful for students who want to proceeds experience while completing their degree.

Successful designers are creative, creative, detailed oriented, are familiar with blueprint technologies, are decision makers and communicate well with others.

Fashion Design Degree Finder
Search our database of online and campus-based style design schools and programs.

Accreditation

Accreditation is an important element of obtaining a quality didactics in fashion pattern and fashion merchandising. Obtaining a caste or advanced education from an accredited establishment will ensure you receive a quality educational activity, that you lot'll qualify for federal financial assistance, and that when y'all graduate your degree or diploma will really mean something.

At that place are various forms of accreditation - and not all are equal. The almost important type of accreditation is "regional" accreditation. Nearly 4-year colleges and universities (ie., Harvard, Standford, etc.) are regionally accredited. Earning your degree from a regionally accredited higher for fashion blueprint institute volition ensure you're getting the best didactics possible, that your degree will exist recognized within the industry, and that y'all'll exist able to use your degree/didactics to pursue other college education opportunities down the route. Typically, regionally accredited schools and colleges volition only take transfer credits from other regionally accredited institutions. This means that if you earn an associate'southward degree in fashion design from a nationally accredited community college, yous'll be unlikely to transfer the credits yous earn to a regionally accredited college or university - which includes nearly reputable four-year colleges and universities in the Usa.

The second type of accreditation is "national" accreditation. While national accreditation sounds cool, regional accreditation is preferable. We recommend earning your degree from a regionally accredited establishment, especially if yous plan on pursuing other college educational activity opportunities down the road. Once more, most regionally accredited colleges and universities volition not accept transfer credits from nationally accredited institutions. Earning a degree, certification or diploma from a nationally accredited school is recommended when you're merely seeking to raise your skills, prepare for entry-level career opportunities, and don't have plans of pursuing boosted education opportunities down the road.

In addition to regional and national accreditation, there is professional accreditation. While regional and national accreditation are full general accrediations, professional accredidation apply just to a specific subject area. The most well known professional accrediting torso in the way design industry is the National Association of Schools of Art and Pattern (NASAD). Well-nigh fashion design institutes and schools are accredited by the NASAD.

Job Outlook

Between 2012 and 2022, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that fashion design career field will feel a 3% decline in employment. Employment of mode designers in apparel manufacturing industries will decline over 50% in the U.S. during the aforementioned time menses due to an increase in apparel production in well-nigh cost efficient international markets. This large decrease in fashion designer employment in the apparel manufacturing industry is responsible for the overall decrease in fashion designer employment of three%. Not including the apparel manufacturing industry, the growth in employment for fashion designers would be almost the same as the average for all occupations nationwide.

Growth in employment for fashion designers who blueprint clothing and accessories for retailers and the mass market will go along to exist strong over the next decade. New innovation in fabrics, design technologies and styles will also spur demand for fashion designers over the side by side ten years.

The best job opportunities in mode design will be obtained by designers with degrees from reputable schools, who have experience and accept developed compelling portfolios that show case their work. However, due to the big number of people seeking employment as fashion designers, competition for positions will be strong.

Most job opportunities for fashion designers will be establish in major metropolitan areas in New York and California.

Working Weather condition

As of 2014, there were approximately 22,500 fashion designers employed in the United States. Fashion designers piece of work in wholesale, retail and manufacturing sectors of the fashion design and vesture industries. They piece of work for design firms, retailer, clothes companies, theater and dance companies, as consultants or independently.

The largest number of fashion designers work in wholesaling and manufacturing. The clothing lines and products developed by designers working for past wholesalers and manufacturers are in plough sold to major retailers, specialty apparel stores, online retailers and catalog companies. While many designers dream of working independently and developing their own wearable line, most fashion designers work equally "in-house designers" for large corporations. A few fortunate (and talented) designers volition design their own clothing lines and develop their own unique personal brand.

Those fashion designers that are self-employed (about 25% of designers) normally blueprint i-of-a-kind, custom apparel for individuals and specialty stores. Many style designers who are self-employed started out in the industry working for someone else. Successful fashion designers frequently develop clothing lines that bear their name (e.g. Valentino, Versace, Armani, Prada, etc.)

As of 2014, the industries that employed the largest number of way designers include the post-obit.

Apparel and merchant wholsalers	28%
Apparel manufacturing	17
Management of companies and enterprises	12%
Specialized pattern services	5%
Electronic markets and brokers	ii%

Way designers usually work normal hours in comfy offices, but are sometimes required to work long hours to meet deadlines. Freelance designers must be flexible to run across their clients' needs. They also piece of work long hours and must piece of work hard to find new clients and satisfy their current customers.

Designers travel extensively to attend trade shows and run across with fabric suppliers in diverse regions throughout the world. They must constantly communicate with suppliers, manufacturers, and clients worldwide.

The majority of way designers work in the states of New York and California.

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