Title: Fashion Designer Careers | The Princeton Review
Headings: Fashion Designer
Fashion Designer
A Day in the Life of a Fashion Designer Careers
Paying Your Dues to Become a Fashion Designer
Present and Future Outlook for Fashion Designer Careers
Quality of Life
PRESENT AND FUTURE
FIVE YEARS OUT
TEN YEARS OUT
MAJORS

Content: You have to know just about everything that’s been done before so that you can recognize it when it becomes popular again,” wrote one respondent. Fashion designers are involved in every phase of designing, showing, and producing all types of clothing, from bathing suits to evening gowns. Those with talent, vision, determination, and ambition can succeed in this difficult, demanding, and highly competitive industry. Fashion design can be more glamorous than a 1940s Hollywood musical or drearier than a bank statement, but it’s always taxing. A designer’s day includes reading current fashion magazines, newspapers, and other media that reflect current trends and tastes. He or she looks at materials, attends fashion shows, and works with other designers on projects. A designer should be able to communicate his or her philosophy, vision, and capabilities clearly and comprehensively through sketches, discussions, and, occasionally, samples. No matter what his or her personal style is, a designer must produce a creative, exciting, and profitable product line. As in most professions that produce superstars, it is easy for a competent but otherwise unremarkable designer to wallow in obscurity, designing small pieces of collections, generic lines (the plain white boxer short, for example), or specialties (cuffs, ruffles, etc.). The personality that raises itself above this level must be as large as the vision of the designer;