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Career Advice on How to Become A Fashion Designer

General Career Information

One of the key requirements for becoming a fashion designer is the ability to achieve a tunnel like vision of all things superficial and mundane.  As a fashion designer, you must be able to convince yourself and all those around you that without fashion history would end.  Gravity would fail, causing all physical objects, including people, to fly off into space.  Yes, that is how important you must believe fashion is in order to work in the most hollow and narcissistic of industries.  Too much?  Ah, then you are obviously a fashion outsider, who has yet to learn the business.  If you can’t handle or toss out a mean spirited catty comments strictly based on one’s physical appearance, then you have no business in the most important industry on earth.
 

Career Facts:

Most people in the fashion business have realized that the real way to make the world a better place is to reinvent the sweater, or daringly, maybe even the sweater vest.  Helping people in other ways, such as making sure they have food or water or medical care is so, like, 90s.  Fashion designers work tirelessly as the glue of society, so that the dummies that work curing diseases and discovering new planets and alternative forms of energy product can look good, if they ever choose to do so.  Without these brave souls, everyone would just look so bad.  But don’t worry, if you ever forget this fact, the fashion designer will promptly remind you along with an accompanying lecture about “haters,” who are jealous of their talent.

If you think you can handle this unique and special working environment, then maybe you have what is needed to work on creating new clothing designs for the “little people.”  Expect to work with all sorts of fabrics and materials, as well as some of the more dreadful human beings that Western civilization can produce, who are, of course, perpetually misunderstood and hated for their sheer da Vincian like brilliance.

 

Career Opportunities and Job Outlook- Poor:

The job growth for fashion designers is expected to be around one-percent between now and 2018, which is far below the average national job growth.  In other words, the job search will  not be easy.
 
Job Outlook is Poor
 

A Day in The Life:

A day in the life of a fashion designer begins waking up and reflexively mumbling, or shouting depending on the personality type, “I hate her too,” or “Oh god, she looks sooooo fat,” or any of a number of other similar mantras.  Fashion designers can be employed in a variety of ways, ranging from owning their own fashion lines to costume design, to working for other fashion designers.  Regardless of the setting, you will likely feel the warmth.
 

Average Salary:

The average fashion designer can expect to earn about $61,000… or almost double the salary of a teacher or fireman.  But has fire ever made anyone look fabulous?  Hardly.  And teachers never know how to dress, oh, but wait that is because they are sooooo poor.  The top ten percent of fashion designers earn about $125,000, approaching what the average doctor can earn.

$61k

 

Career Training and Qualifications:

Most employers seek fashion designers who have degrees in fashion design.  A working knowledge of the industry and proof of ability are key elements in finding a job.  Increasingly, computer-aided design (CAD) is seen as being a vital skill as well.
 
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