5 Ways to Prepare for Fashion Design School
Get started on the right foot in fashion design school by using these five tips.
Fashion design schools offer focused curricula that help prepare you to enter the exciting and challenging world of fashion design.
The best applicants are those who are equipped with the basic skills and knowledge to succeed from the first day of school.
Knowing as much about your program and college will allow you to breeze through orientation basics, such as classroom location, and focus on the most important thing: your design studies.
Follow these five helpful tips to set yourself apart in fashion design school:
1. Think in Terms of Your Portfolio
The best way to stay focused at fashion design school is to work on each project as though it will become part of your portfolio. The most successful students operate this way, using each assignment as an opportunity to showcase their creativity and skills. If you do this, not only will you graduate with a wide variety of work examples, but you also find it easier to apply what you learn to your future job.
2. Keep Up on Trends
Staying abreast of trends is a basic necessity for fashion designers. The best designers stay ahead of the trends, so start honing your eye now before beginning school. Keeping an eye on the mass market offerings in your local boutiques will be important, as will watching fashion week in New York and Milan and other global fashion hotspots. A well-rounded view of fashion and its applications will give you a foundation for expressing your own personal creativity in class.
3. Start Sewing
Successful fashion designers have great relationships with their sewing machines. An intimate understanding of the fabrics, threads, techniques and challenges inherent in the actual construction of clothing will allow you to plan out successful projects in fashion design school. Become as familiar as possible with this important tool, and you will find you start approaching fashion design in a much more applicable (and marketable) way.
4. Sharpen Your Technology Skills
Like most professions, fashion design is now utilizing the best that technology has to offer. Fashion design software programs are popular in the industry. These tools help you create 3D models of your designs, allowing you to see how the fabrics will fit and flow before investing your time and money. A working knowledge of these and other computer graphics programs will help you transition quickly into fashion design school.
5. Talk to Fashion Design School Graduates
No one can tell you how to prepare for fashion design school better than recent graduates. So don't be shy. If you're someone who needs to imagine yourself in the halls, studios, labs and classrooms of potential fashion design schools before you sign up, just ask an admissions officer to connect you with a current or recent student.