Imagine, everyone is making use of the best design in the market and that is especially designed by you. It gives you  great satisfaction & will leave you feeling very proud. Being the centre of attraction in a party or an occasion is really not that easy to make. By being stylish & trendy you can attract all the bees to you like a magical flower. To make it possible, you must select an outfit that really suits you perfectly. By doing so, you will be the queen bee of the event. To update your wardrobe with the new coolest fashion trends, we will need Fashion Designing & styling skills.

Fashion Designing has come to the extent of taking over the consciousness of everything we wear and use on a day-to-day basis and everyone wants to be making a fashion statement regarding the things we hold on to. As every industry is developing, the fashion industry also took its place in developing every aspect. Also, it took a step forward and made its place in the academic field. As we all know, many Fashion Designing courses are in trend today, why don’t we choose Fashion Designing as our best career option and make designs that trend.

What is Fashion Designing?

Fashion Designers create clothing and accessories that are purchased by consumers from all over the world. Fashion Designers study fashion trends, design all the clothing and accessories, pattern cut, select colours and fabrics, make up the final production of their designs. In the fashion world, “style” is usually shorthand for “personal style,” or the way an individual expresses themselves through aesthetic choices such as their clothing, accessories, hairstyle and the way they put an outfit together.

Fashion Designing encompasses the wide spectrum of colours, patterns, styles- designing anything which makes it look fashionable and unique to make it trend in particular era will come under Fashion Designing.

Fashion Designing Courses

Are you a fashion lover and thinking of learning Fashion Designing? Do you want to explore more about this field? To become a Fashion Designer, students can pursue the popular undergraduate courses in B.Sc or BFTech in Fashion Design. They can also do masters at a post-graduation level like MFTech and also short term courses that are offered by many institutes. These courses educate students to learn the tricks of the trade. Depending on one’s personal interest, they can choose the course offered by many of the institutions.

India is home to some of the top-rated Fashion Design institutes such as

• National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), it has its college branches in Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Patna, Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, Kolkata.
• Hamstech Institute of Creative Education, Hyderabad
• Pearl Academy, Delhi, Jaipur
• Symbiosis Institute of Design, Pune etc.

Let’s now take a look at the courses offered at an Undergraduate level.

• Fashion Design
• Textile Design
• Leather Design
• Accessory Design
• Knitwear Design
• Jewellery Design
• Lifestyle and Accessory Design
• Fashion and Apparel Design

Here are some of the courses on offer for a postgraduate degree Fashion Designing.

• Textile Management
• Fashion Designing
• Fashion Design and Business Management
• Retail Management and Fashion Merchandising

If you are interested in short-term courses, a number of diploma courses are also in the field.

Let’s see the courses which come under short term courses.

• Diploma in Fashion Designing
• Diploma in Apparel Merchandising
• Advanced diploma in fashion designing
• Specializations in Fashion Journalism, Theatre Costume Designing, Fashion & Law.

Undergraduate degree courses generally span from 3-4 years. Every course has its individual course duration.

We will now take a brief look over the types of Designing courses and get a better idea of what they offer

Textile Design

Textile Design involves creating designs & prints over textiles. A textile apparel designer in the textile and fabric manufacturing unit will design and then oversee manufacturing of fabrics to ensure that output meets the client’s requirements. Textile designers often design collections based on the high-end fashion stores. You must be having the skills of

• Creative flair and artistic ability
• Good eye for colour, texture fabric and patterns
• An understanding towards the trends
• Interest in fashion and textiles

Once the courses are completed, you can start your career by entering into the working fields like textile research, textile design, textile production, textile marketing and sales.

Leather Design

Leather Design applies extensively to footwear, jackets and bags. Leather Designing aspirants should have the following qualities in order to be eligible for a leather designing course.

• Creative designing skills
• Strong planning ability
• Problem solving ability

Jewellery Design

Do you have a liking towards jewellery? Then you must select Jewellery Design as a career path. To have a successful career in jewellery designing, one must have the following skills:

• Interpersonal skills
• Innovation
• Visual imagination
• Knowledge of different metals and gems

By pursuing the Jewellery Designing course at Hamstech, you can become a jewellery designer, jewellery consultant, entrepreneur who can start up their own jewellery business.

Knitting Design

This course will teach you about design, knitting, types of knitting, hand knitting etc. This course is ideal for knitting, yarning, stitching and anyone who is interested in new crafts. By end of the course you will have an understanding of

• Knitwear trends and designs
• Colour, stitch and texture through swatches
• Technical hand knitting skills
• Different yarns and their properties

Required Skills for Fashion Designing

Are you thinking of being an inspiration to others to follow and become a successful Fashion Designer? Then you should have the unique skills to justify the Job responsibilities. Every field needs its own skills to be successful in that particular path. Here are some of the key skills, which are most required by a person to achieve desired position in Fashion Designing

• Creativeness
• Artistic thinking
• Strong imaginative skills
• Detailed observation skills
• Innovative skills
• Competitiveness
• Good Communication skills too

Dress Sketches for Fashion Designing

Fashion Illustration is the art of communicating fashion ideas in a visual form that originates with illustration, drawing and painting and also known as Fashion Sketching. Fashion sketching plays a major role in designing to preview and visualize the designs before sewing actual clothes

Are you in a dilemma “Can I design clothes if I can’t draw?” Don’t worry. You can still become a successful Fashion Designer and not be good at drawing. With Digital Fashion Pro you can design clothing and create professional digital fashion sketches even if you can’t draw at all. In fact, most clothing lines use fashion design software to create their designs. Most manufacturers also require designers to submit their designs in a clean digital format over hand drawings.

We all know about sketching and the tools it calls for. If you are just starting out with fashion illustration, you will probably find many suggestions and lists of products to buy online, but honestly all you need at the beginning is a piece of paper and a pencil. The first thing you will do on your journey to become a fashion illustrator is practice drawing fashion figures and that means discovering movement, body positions, shapes and shades. For this purpose, you don’t need anything fancy or expensive, you can use a regular HB pencil or a mechanical pen if you prefer and a piece of copy or print paper.

After you have been practicing sketching with a regular pencil and paper, then you can start by building your first art kit. Here is the list of essentials for Fashion Sketching.

• Sketchbooks
• Drawing pencils
• Pencil sharpeners and erasers
• Fine black pens
• Watercolour set
• Markers
• Coloured pencils

Types of sketching tools useful in the beginning:

1. Semi-transparent Paper or Tracing paper – perfect for tracing and sketching until you are satisfied with the final work. You can try different brands to see which one works best for you.
2. All-purpose paper or sketchpad – Don’t waste your money on buying different papers for each media you will use because in the beginning that is really not necessary. Aim for all-purpose papers so that you can experiment, use mixed media and try different techniques freely.
3. Sketchbook – There are so many types to choose from in this area – you can buy a basic pocket book that you can carry around and sketch on the go or a layout that will boost your creative juices. Here you can do quick sketches of ideas that come to you during the day or use it as a general design idea book.
4. Graphite Pencils – These are the basic tools of every artist and you literally have to spend a few cents to buy an HB pencil which will give you a medium strength line.
5. Fine Liners – It is very useful to have black fine liners in several sizes for finishing your work or finalizing a sketch.
6. Markers – These seem to be the most commonly used among fashion illustrators and designers as they are quick to use and give an acceptable representation of fabric and colour. If you decide to illustrate with markers, start by purchasing a set for skin tone shades, then add a few colours over time.
7. Colour pencils – Especially when you have large areas to colour, they are fairly easy to start with because you can build colour as you go so it is harder to mess up and you can fix things easily in case of an error. If you use soft-core pencils then you have the ability to blend with ease and create all kinds of textures and fabrics.
8. Water colours – You can use watercolour pencils in the beginning as they are easier to use than watercolours because you are more in control and less likely to mess up your work.

If we breakdown fashion sketching, there are 3 types of fashion sketches that we were going to use throughout the work-time when dealing with clients or making a collection, which are:

• Quick Fashion Sketches – Nothing but a rough sketch, a sketchbook to generate the ideas. Developing a quick hand at sketching is very helpful throughout the design process. When designing for a client, draw multiple rough sketches with different ideas and possibilities and finally grab one from here and one from there and convert them into a brand new design or these could be used to give options to your client.
• Rendered Fashion Sketches – These are the ones which we are pretty much aware of and spend lots of time perfecting. Mainly used by fashion students in building up their portfolios, these used to give previews to the buyer, for press releases or as  look-books to give a sneak-peek of the entire collection for presales of the product.
• Flat Fashion Sketches – Flat fashion sketches allow the seamstress and production unit to understand the design and this acts as the main communication tool to make garments come alive. The most important aspect of fashion sketches is that they play a major role in producing a garment, depicted in the flat form with all the details like seams, zippers, trims, style lines, stitch lines and technical hardware of a garment.

So, what is the Fashion Dress Designing process? This is the process for every garment from idea to production. Now, let’s keep it simple and break the process into steps.

1. Ideation – In order to create a cohesive design, you must first organize your ideas and inspiration into a mood board. Taking the time to organize your ideas will result in a cohesive and successful final garment. You can also look at magazines, books, photos, nature and trend platforms for inspiration. The sky’s the limit! Wherever you choose to find your inspiration, you should house it in one location – whether that’s a board on Pinterest, a notebook or an album on your phone. Let your inspiration guide you. Once you have your ideas and inspiration organized, you can begin to link themes. Organize your ideas by theme, and compile them into a mood board.
2. Fashion Illustration – If you’re DIYing this part, don’t worry about getting it perfect just yet, this step is all about getting your ideas from your head onto paper. Try some unique combinations, you never know what’s going to spark those transformative design ideas! Continue this until you’ve created a design that you love.
3. Technical Sketch – Next, the Technical Designer will create a Technical Sketch of your design. Your Technical Sketch is the blueprint for your design, so it’s important that the sketch reflects the correct construction of the garment.
4. Tech Pack – The technical sketch will then be used to create a Tech Pack for the garment. They will work with the sourcing agent or developer to come up with fabric and trim options. Once the details have been finalized, the Tech Pack is sent out for factory and fabric sourcing.
5. Sourcing – Once your style Tech Pack has been created, you can send it out to source the different elements of the design. Unless you already have a factory in mind, you can look at this like the “shopping around” phase for your design. Things that you’ll want to source are:
6. Manufacturing (where it’s assembled)
7. Trims (supplier)
8. Fabrics (supplier)
9. Labels and Packaging

6. Sampling – Now that you’ve sourced your factory and materials, you can update your Tech Pack to reflect the same and send the Tech Pack to your factory for sampling. Your samples are made in a separate room at the factory, off of the production line, until your garment is ready for production. Your factory will work from your Tech Pack specs to develop an initial pattern.
7. Fit and review – When your samples come in, the Technical Designer will need to review the sample and adjust the Tech Pack as needed. You will continue this cycle until you are happy with the final prototype.
8. Design approval – Now that you’ve finished up the sampling process and love your design, it’s time to approve it! You’ll want to double check all the details and make sure your Tech Pack is 100% accurate and updated.  If there are no further changes you’re ready for production!
9. Production – Your garments will be produced on the factory’s production line once the design has been approved. If you’ve specified it in your Tech Pack, your garments will be tagged/packaged and sent to your distributor.

There are a number of Fashion Designers in INDIA. To celebrate some of the most Indian Fashion Designers, we’ve curated some of our most favourite fashion designers from India in no particular order. These Indian designers cater to all various categories, womenswear, menswear, ethnic contemporary to modern. You name the style and you’ll find one of these fashion designers is the master of it.

Top Fashion Designers in INDIA

• Manish Malhotra
• Ritu Kumar
• Tarun Tahiliani
• Anamika Khanna
• Neeta Lulla

Now we are going to have a small look and know about them

MANISH MALHOTHRA

Manish Malhotra is one of India’s most successful fashion designers. Malhotra has designed for many leading actresses in Bollywood. He is known in the Indian film industry for his different style and his ability to envision a ‘look’ for the character. He is known for designing the costumes for Urmila Matondkar in the film Rangeela. Stars including Madhuri Dixit, Sridevi, Kajol, Karisma Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, Parineeti Chopra and many others have worn his designs. Although he usually designs for men, he designed for Sharukh Khan and Imran Khan. He was also asked to design clothes for Michael Jackson when he visited India for a Bollywood show.

RITU KUMAR

Ritu Kumar is one of India’s foremost designers. She has developed a unique style of her own, reflecting the ancient traditions of Indian craftsmanship in a contemporary vocabulary. Ritu’s understanding of ancient designs and the innovative use of traditional crafts has created a new classicism. Ritu, who began her work with four hand-block printers and two tables in a small village near Calcutta forty years ago, was the first woman to introduce the ‘boutique’ culture in India under the brand name ‘Ritu’. Today she has outlets in 14 cities in India. Ritu’s boutiques feature a multifaceted showcase encompassing the very best of Indian design, with specially produced range of high fashion garments and accessories using silk, leather and cotton. Ritu’s range of western and Indian apparel is all about traditions and individual talent, and women across the continents can easily identify with her vision of design.

Tarun Tahiliani

Tarun Tahiliani is a noted Indian fashion designer. With his wife Sailaja ‘Sal’ Tahiliani, he co-founded Ensemble, India’s first multi-designer boutique in 1987, followed by Tahiliani Design studio in 1990. Based in Delhi, he is best known for his ability to infuse Indian craftsmanship and textile heritage with European tailored silhouettes. His signature is to combine traditional aesthetics with modern design. Over the years, he also became known for his bridal wear. Of late, Tahiliani has taken on several projects in interior design. He has designed interiors for hotels, restaurants, resorts and homes and has even begun to design for Indian weddings.

Anamika Khanna

Anamika Khanna is an Indian fashion designer with her own label. She has been covered by the Business of Fashion (BOF) magazine as the Indian designer who has blended traditional Indian textiles and techniques with Western silhouettes and tailoring. She is the first Indian designer to have an International label: Anamika. She is also the first female Indian fashion designer to display her collections at the Paris Fashion Week held in 2007. Anamika was offered an exclusive contract by British retail giant, Harrod’s after her participation in the London Fashion Week.

Neeta Lulla

Neeta Lulla is an Indian costume designer and fashion stylist who has worked on over 300 films. She has been designing wedding dresses since 1985. Her name became inseparably associated with Bollywood after actresses Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit wore her costumes in Devdas. Her first big client was jewellery designer Varuna Jani, though Jani hadn’t started her business at the time. After that Neeta Lulla fully committed to a Bollywood client base when she designed for actress Sapna,who was prominent in the Bollywood community in South India. This success was followed by her designs for actresses Salma Agha and Sridevi.

Job Opportunities in the Field of Fashion Designing

If you really have the talent for designing, you will surely have  countless job opportunities to create your own path in the field of fashion. After completing the course, you can take up any one of the following listed designations to build up your career in Fashion Designing.

• Fashion Designer
• Fashion Marketer
• Costume Designer
• Footwear Designer
• Quality Controller
• Fashion Show Organiser

Everyone will have an inner voice and a thought process running behind them, “Is this a good career option to step in? Will there be any growth in my career?” Definitely, there is going to be wonderful career growth with moving times. This field brings with it  interesting opportunities & an attractive payscale  for the Designers.

• An entry-level Fashion Designer with less than 1 year experience can expect to earn an average total compensation of ₹2,98,415.
• An early career Fashion Designer with 1-4 years of experience earns an average compensation of ₹3,49,877.
• A mid-career Fashion Designer with 5-9 years of experience earns an average total compensation of ₹5,91,422.
• An experienced Fashion Designer with 10-19 years of experience can earn an average compensation of ₹8,14,221.

Thus, you won’t just have the opportunity to express yourself but can make money with your passion. So, don’t miss this opportunity. Apply now to join the fashion designing courses at Hamstech & start your journey towards your dream career.