FASHION DESIGNING AS CAREER

Do you love to wear latest fashion clothing? Do you want to be up to date with the latest trends? Do you want appreciation with smart, stylish and fashionable clothing? You might be thinking what type of questions I am asking because everybody wants to wear the latest trend and clothing in the talk. Don’t you? Exactly, everyone is fond of fashionable clothes. People like me are now a day ready to spend as much as they can but they want designer clothing. Few people like me consider comfort, color, and fabric also. So what is Fashion designing? Fashion designing is basically an art of applying fashion by fashion designers to clothing or accessories. Fashion designers are actually persons with any sort of degree in Fashion Designing from some institute or college. There are many fashion schools where fashion designing is even taught. In India few colleges where fashion designing is actually taught includes 

·         National Institute of fashion designing

·         Amity University

·         Pearl Academy of fashions

·         Apeejay Institute of design

·         Arch Academy of design

·         National Institute of design

·         Indian Institute of art and design

What you think, fashion designing is easy? Then answer is No, Because of Fashion designers in clothing think about many aspects of geographical location, culture, people, size, shape, fabric and more importantly their taste. They keep in their mind that who is likely to wear a garment and the occasion in which it will be worn. That’s nice. They work on a wide range and combinations of fabrics and a wide range of colors, patterns, and styles to choose from. In India, few fashion designer’s names Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Manish Arora Neeta Lulla, Manish Malhotra and much more needs no introduction as designers. Many actors, actress and high profile people wears these designer clothes.

If we go to the history, then Fashion design is generally considered to have started in the 19th century with Charles Frederick Worth who was the first fashion designer to have his label sewn into the garments that he created.

What are the basic elements of a design? A design can be defined as an arrangement of lines, shape, colors and texture that create a visual image. The principles of design are the rates that govern how elements are combined. The elements are therefore the raw materials that must be combined successfully. 

The following are the different elements of Design:

1. Shape

2. Texture

3. Color

4. Line

These elements are considered as “Plastics” in art language because they can be manipulated by the designer to create desired results. Now let’s discuss each element briefly: 

The Shape in a garment reveals overall attractive feature and hides the less attractive ones. The overall shape of a garment is its outline. The shape is created by the construction of a garment considering overall height and dimensions of the person’s body. The shape can be tabular, bell, back fullness. 

Texture reveals how the surface of a fabric feels and looks. Texture can be smooth, shiny, rough, sheer, dull, clinging soft, stiff and visual. 

The color is the main thing that a customer notices. Color may be stimulating or relaxing. Different colors invoke different thoughts in people wearing them. 

Lines in a cloth are important as vertical lines increase height effect, Horizontal lines short the height effects. Curved lines are of feminine nature and diagonal lines indicate active and sportive nature. 

Now let’s talk about designer’s Work. Fashion designers may work full-time for one fashion house, as 'in-house designers', which owns the designs. Fashion designers may work alone or as part of a team. Freelance designers work for themselves, selling their designs to fashion houses, directly to shops, or to clothing manufacturers.

Nowadays the fashion industry depends more on mass market sales. The mass market takes to care for a wide range of customers and their pocket.

Fashion designer produces duplicates designs by using cheaper fabrics and simpler production techniques. The end product can, therefore, be sold at much cheaper rate. The one example I have in my mind is “Maria B”. Maria-B is the famous fashion designer in Pakistan known all over the globe for their dresses, but duplicate Maria b is easily available at much cheaper rate and that is of course for the mass market. They are sold as replicas.

Do you know China and Bangladesh are the biggest manufacturers of clothing, and other notable clothing manufacturing countries are Indonesia, Germany, Malaysia, India, Philippines, South Korea, Spain, and Brazil? I remember when I was in the USA. Once I visited Kohl’s. Kohl’s sells clothing and you won’t believe most of the clothes were “made in china”.

Do you know that the "big four" centers of the fashion industry are Milan, New York City, Paris and London? Seven countries which have established an international reputation in fashion includes France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, and Belgium.

Today in fashion design has reached new heights by computer aided methods of design. These computers aided programs have enabled designers to change the textures and colors of designs easily and create three-dimensional images of their designs. These technologies have made the tasks easier, faster, cheaper (in some areas), better and reliable. CAD/CAM has substituted manual methods in almost every field. CAD is nowadays part of the qualification for designers. There is some useful CAD software’s available online as follows, OptiTex CAD Software, eTelestia CAD Software. 

Fashion designers often make flat garment sketches in Adobe Illustrator. This is a technical sketch showing all seams and details so that the pattern cutter knows exactly what proportions the garment should have. 

Nowadays, designing clothes has become easier with the use of clothing design software. With the use of such software, creating clothes has become easy. Using this software one can be creative with their design ideas with the help of powerful tools.

I will name some softwares

·         Virtual fashion

·         Dress Assistant

·         Poser

·         Realistic Apparel Templates Pack

·         PhiMatrix Professional

·         NedGraphics Fashion Design

·         Digital Fashion Pro

·         Cameo v5

·         My Label 3D Fashion by Bernina

·         Kaledo by Lectra