It is always interesting to find out what people in fashion professions actually do and how their usual working day goes. The teacher of our course “Certified Fashion Designer” and a working fashion designer, Julia Kulakova, will talk about how the working day of a clothing designer is organised.
How the designer’s day is organised?
The morning
“You come to work and paint your nails, then you drink coffee while watching the latest shows. Then comes the famous actress for a fitting and you chat with her happily discussing where you should travel for a vacation. Seems too good to be true. Maybe someone works like this, but all my friends, designers, talk about a completely different schedule.
So:
The morning in the design studio begins with the fact that people write and call you all at once, as if a year has passed since your breakup. Mostly they call from the Production, where the collection is sewn.
A huge number of very important and urgent issues need to be solved.
For example:
-How to cut this corduroy: in one or two directions?
-The supplier sent the wrong fabric color – what should I do?
-I can’t carefully sew the zipper – the fabric is too thick, etc. …
The afternoon
After you save the world several times from the creation of ridiculous things that may result from unresolved issues, fittings begin.
Tests are done together with the design constructor, a model and the product manager (if you work in a design company).
Each person is responsible for his own work.
- The clothes should fit well on the figure – the design constructor is responsible for this.
- The clothes should be commercially successful – this is the responsibility of the product-manager.
- The clothes should correspond to the style of the brand – this is the designer’s responsibility.
Sometimes everyone starts fighting 🙂 because of a divergence of opinion. Just kidding, everything goes peacefully and usually everyone is in solidarity.
After fitting, you need to make changes to the passports of clothes.
A passport is a document for a piece of clothes. It is necessary for the Production.
There is a sketch in it with stitches and accessories, the colors and the fabric of the future piece of clothes are prescribed.
The evening
After the afternoon, I begin to work on a collection for the new season. The specifics of working in the fashion business is such that you should do two seasons at the same time.
One is being worked on with fitting, and the other is still presented in the form of a mood board, sketches of clothing and an image in the head.
To be always aware of all the trends, you need to watch and study a lot. Therefore, part of the working day, the designer watches fashion shows, photos of bloggers and simply beautiful pictures. He studies fashion websites and reads the news of the fashion industry.
So, there appear a modern image of a person. And this is important in the work of the designer.
Before the end of the working day
Mail, phone, phone apps – I save the world again. And it’s time to go home. But thoughts about the collection never end.
Oh, and by the way, even on a typical day for a fashion designer, trips to fabric exhibitions or to production offices, trips to fabric warehouses, visiting clothing stores to study working and much more other things to do!
I really love my profession!
