Fashion Designing as a Career

By Joshua Newman  

Do you have the passion and drive to pursue a career in Fashion Design? Joshua Newman explains the potential and scope of Fashion Design in India.

As Fashion Design jobs get immense attention for being the creative driver of the industry, the fashion world is actually a very complex ecosystem with a large community performing a wide variety of essential functions. Designing is only one part of the whole ecosystem. So if you have the creativity and vision to launch your own clothing line, or the business and marketing know-how to sell the latest trends, there’s a place for you in the fashion industry.

How to decide if Fashion Design is the right career choice?

A career in fashion designing has always been lucrative. It requires the right amount of know-how and understanding that clothes are more than protection. Clothes make a person feel confident, powerful or they can be comforting. Clothing can be an artistic appearance or a projection of the image people want the world to see about them. Mentioned below are some skills and traits needed to be a fashion designer:

Skills to have	Qualities to have
Great deductive reasoning	Original and innovative
Good decision-making skills	Enterprising
Good communication skills	Dependable
Good listening abilities	Organised
Good coordination	Independent
Good judgment	-
Excellent attention to detail	-

How to go about the entire process?

Once you are sure that you have that passion and the drive-in you to pursue a career in fashion design, you already are on the right track. There are many reputed institutes in India that help you reach your goal. But all this starts with nurturing your dream. There are many pre-prep institutes that coach you to get through the best fashion design colleges in India, the coaching starts as early as you are in class 10^th or 11^th. You need to make sure that you make the right decision while selecting the institute you wish to learn in, as this is the launchpad of your dreams.

Scope of Fashion Designing in India

The Indian fashion industry is expanding and is expected to reach US$ 400 million in a couple of years with a vigorous growth of over 10 percent year-on-year. In comparison with the global industry, this is very tiny; it is not too bad for an industry in this stage of infancy.

The reason India's fashion industry will have a bright future is that it has a large number of youngsters. The combination of India’s large youth population and increasing disposable incomes is the reason why India’s fashion industry will have a bright future. This will lead to consumerism. With an increasing sense of spending to look good, the love for brand names has increased.

Opportunities in Fashion Industry

This industry offers an abundance of opportunities for artistic, creative, hard-working, and enthusiastic people. The scenario for fashion design graduates looks well, thanks to the enormous and ever-increasing demand for stylish clothes, the foreign clothing culture adoption, and the increase in exports.

After the successful accomplishment of the graduate course, one can be self-employed and have their own labels. On the other hand, several garment store chains, export houses, leather companies, textile mills, boutiques, fashion show organisers, jewellery houses, and fashion advisors recruit young professionals fascinated with a career in fashion designing.

The horizon of fashion design is not just confined to designing of clothes, it covers several other aspects related to lifestyle and glamour like accessory designing, footwear designing,  jewellery designing, styling, costume designing, etc. The fashion industry is growing internationally today as most of the overseas design houses and brands have their manufacturing unit in countries like India, China, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to cut down on their making cost leading to a wide scope for design professionals in our country.

There is a vast choice from joining some design houses to fashion designers, manufacturers, or exporters. You can get a paid job or you can design clothes to sell from various MBO’s (Management by Objectives) or your own Boutique. It is one of the best paying industry today, though there is extreme competition. But, at the same time, the opportunities are also growing at the same scale. Today, Indian designers are dressing some of the most popular celebrities from Hollywood and around the world.

Importance of fashion platforms to showcase new creativity

It is a creative field and you will find a lot of upcoming designers today who are quite talented and who are making news in the global scenario. And to bring these talents in front of the world fashion platforms like fashion weeks play a very important role. Where not only people from the fashion industry get to see their talent but also the consumers get to see and know about the designers and their work. There are quite a few multi-designer boutiques that offer a platform to upcoming designers to showcase and sell their work. So, if you love a lifestyle which includes fabrics, colours, style and glamour and you can create magic with these, you should join the creative world of fashion designing.

Read More:

• Design Course, Career & Scope
• Textile Design Course & Scope
• Graphic Design Course & Scope
• Footwear Design Career & Scope
• Leather Design Career & Scope
• Furniture Design Career & Scope
• Apparel Design Career & Scope
• Knitwear Design Career & Scope
• Visual Merchandising Career & Scope

About the Author:

Joshua Newman is Director Marketing & Alliances at ITM Institute for Design and Media (ITM-DM).