The Fashion Design Process

If I was going to pursue a career as an artist, I would focus on either photography or fashion design. You have seen my passion for photography through my post on taking better iPhone photos, but as a younger teenager, I used to be OBSESSED with fashion design. I took so many classes and did so much research in order to pursue this passion of mine, and it didn’t just involve drawing clothes on models.

There are many different parts to the fashion industry that are just as important as the design process. There’s the textile industry and choosing materials for clothing, the economic aspect, the runway shows, the media aspect through mostly magazines, like Marie Claire and Vogue, and so much more. So in this post, I’m going to outline a basic process that a company or designer would go through to get an item of clothing from just a drawing on a piece of paper to the rack at mid to higher end store like Calvin Klein or Tommy Hilfiger. This process varies from designer to designer, but it generally will be similar amongst most labels.

Generally, a designer will release clothing in a collection of a multitude of outfits or pieces that has a similar theme or feeling. So the first step in creating a collection would be to establish the feeling or the imagery that will dictate the full collection. Sometimes a designer will find inspiration from a specific place, fabric, building, music piece, or anything else and the feeling will be developed from there, using an imagery board or mood board. It’s also important for designers to research what kinds of colors, fabrics, patterns and fits will be popular in the upcoming season.

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mood-board

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You can really see the themes that each mood board is going for. The next step would be to start actually designing the clothing. Many designers prefer to work in drawings or on CAD programs, but some will go straight to form and drape different fabrics on dress forms. This also depends on the type of clothing the designer is trying to create. Designers will create tons of sketches and designs and then refine them down to the strongest ones.

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The sketches then turn into “flats”, which are drawings of the clothing that are completely two-dimensional and show all the stitching and how the pattern should be cut. These are really technical, precise drawings with measurement specifications so that the manufacturers know exactly how to produce the garments.

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This is a spec sheet that has all the required measurements

At the same time as the design process is going on, the designer will be trying to find appropriate fabrics and materials to use for the clothing being designed. This isn’t a simple process either because most of the time the fabric has to be created in huge amounts to fit the designer’s needs. Different fabrics work for different situations. For example, heavy fabrics like tweed or wool, work better for nice pants or skirts while light fabrics like silk or batiste are better for blouses and shirts.

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Also, when the designers need a specific color, the fabric has to be specially dyed at a facility through a company like Pantone.

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Then the clothing is actually manufactured for the fashion show. A lot of the time, for mid to high-end designers, a lookbook will be created that has the entire collection’s worth of drawings, flats, pictures, and fabric swatches. This booklet will be given to retailers/consumers at the fashion show, especially at higher end shows, so that after the show they can purchase the specific garments they want in the future. This happens when the company doesn’t necessarily want to make the garment if nobody is going to buy it.

A couple pages of an Adidas lookbook
A couple pages of an Adidas lookbook

This is a very basic outline of what happens, but as you can see, it can get quite complicated and definitely has a major business aspect to it. A lot of this information is what I remember from when I used to take fashion design classes, but this website also really helped me out for the stuff I forgot, if you want to check it out. There’s a lot of cool articles about the fashion industry in there, and even a 7 part series on the best decisions to make when creating your own fashion business. Happy surfing!

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