Fashion Career Description

The fashion world of apparels is a global industry that is home to a number of professional jobs encompassing the design and marketing of fashion apparels.  The careers are as follow:

  • Fashion Design Fashion designers are either haute couture (French for high fashion) designers targeted among celebrities and moneyed people such as Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Calvin Klein, etc or ready-to-wear designers fro brands like  GAP, Levis, Marks & Spencer, etc.
  • Fashion Photography The fashion photographer has little to do with fashion itself but hinges on a talent to capture the models and get thier works published in fashion magazines.
  • Fashion Marketing and Merchandising After the glamour comes the more mundane business side to make sure that the apparels carrying the design are sold.  This applies more to ready-to-wear labels.  A career in fashion merchandising often brings to the world of apparel retailing where you can exercise your creative muscle in department store window displays and marketing initiatives to bring apparel brand to appeal to target customers.

Education and Training

It’s all about artistic and creative talent more than anything.  But just to get you started with the right exposure, you can enroll in some of the more noted fashion design schools for a diploma, associate or BA degree in fashion design and merchandising.   There’s only one Ivy League for fashion design which is Cornel University in Ithaca, New York where you can get a PhD in apparel design.

Employment

Fashion designers can be employed in mass market and branded ready-to-wear label as well as in haute couture houses. The median salary for a fashion designer stands at about $45,000 annually.  A fashion merchandising manager, on the other hand, can earn from $32,000 to $68,000 annually.

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