7 skills you need to be a fashion designer

Wikipedia defines fashion design as the art of the application of design and aesthetics or natural beauty to clothing and accessories. There are a variety of fashion jobs that you can do, but the most well-known and popular one is the fashion designer.

Are you daydreaming about seeing your designer outfits on the catwalks of the world? Constantly thinking that the clothes that people wear are impractical and that you could design better clothes? If you’re answering “yes” to both these questions, the Fashion / Textile industry might just be the right job field for you. You need a particular skill set to do fashion design jobs and today we’re highlighting 7 of them:

1. Good communication skills: You must be able to communicate your ideas and concepts to people verbally and in writing.

2. Basic art skills: You don’t need to be a Picasso or Monet when you’re a fashion designer, but you need to able to sketch or paint your designs. If you can’t, your visions / concepts won’t be turned into actual clothes.

3. Creativity: To be a great fashion designer, you’ll have to often think outside of the box and come up with unique concepts and designs.

4. A real appreciation for beauty: You need to love beautiful things and have a passion for beauty to conceptualize and sketch beautiful designs. If you don’t appreciate beauty you can’t be a fashion designer.

5. Keen eye for detail and colour: If you see something that is magenta or red velvet but to you they are both just “purple”, then you should not be going into fashion design. You also need to be able to spot wrong stitches and other glitches in the garments and accessories that you’ve designed.

6. Sewing: You need to able to patch together your designs.

7. High self-confidence: You have to confident with your designs and concepts. You also have to look the part so people you work with don’t push you around in the cut-throat fashion industry.

Well, there you have it, 7 skills you need to be a fashion designer. Becoming a top fashion designer is a lot of hard work. Expect to get the most of the grunt work for the first few years of working in the industry (like doing a lot of coffee runs for your boss), but over time you’ll get the opportunity to prove yourself and then you can go places and could end up being self-employed (like many of the top fashion designers).

Looking for fashion jobs? Check out Job Mail for the latest listings in the Fashion / Textile category.