Fashion Design and Merchandising
Careers in fashion
Prepare for a fashion career.
Fashion joins style with business, so flair alone is not enough.
Three key abilities:
- Forecasting: reading past and current trends, and staying ahead.
- Analytical: 'dollars and sense': understanding the economy, the company, customers' budgets, and profit.
- Communication: negotiating with manufacturers, selling to the public, writing advertising copy and press releases.
Courses: certificates or diplomas (6 months to a year) for quick entry; longer degree programmes; and four-year bachelor's degrees that join the liberal arts with fashion and business. Designers often add business study to run their own label or store.
Many professional fashion designers are self-employed. Most specialise in one area, and must keep refreshing their ideas as trends change.
Careers: visual merchandise designer (shop windows, displays, mannequins); fashion designer; set designer (film, TV, theatre, trade shows); interior designer (the beauty, safety and function of spaces). Forecast, analyse, communicate.
Practise this lesson
Questions that get harder as you improve, a Tutor that helps without giving the answer away, and progress you can see. Free for every learner.
No account, no email address. Opens the real product.