About
Welcome to a day to day in fashion. While being a fashion designer is an amazingly rewarding, fun and creative job, it can often be extremely stressful, crazy and intense. But what kind of a job would it be without those attributes? I work for a design studio in Denver, CO, here on out referred to as “the studio”. Just like a graphic design studio would, we provide fashion design services for companies who prefer to outsource this department. Here’s a brief rundown of what I do (which encompasses the entire product development cycle)…in a small nutshell…starting from the beginning, the design phase.
-Design the collections (I work specifically on men’s most of the time)
-Pick fabrics, trims, and finalize design details for each garment
-Create Tech Packs (or Garment Requests – here on out referred to as “GR’s”) for each garment – this is a technical packet of information that has all of the information the vendor needs to make the garment. Ideally, you should be able to give them this packet and they should be able to produce the garment without asking any questions (usually not the case however…).
-Send GR’s to multiple vendors who will then submit pricing; based on pricing and other factors (vendor reliability, relationships, quality, etc) we choose vendors to proceed with each garment (a collection of 20 given styles can often be distributed to as many as 4-6 different vendors).
-Review and approve lab dips (fabric in the correct quality for any given style “dipped” in dye that matches our “color standard”), fabric qualities, trim qualities, etc submitted by vendors.
-Review and approve actual garment prototypes submitted by vendors. Based on how good or bad each proto is, we may request more until they get it right.
-Review and approve actual “sales sample” garments or various stages of “bulk production” garments.
-Design the collections…
In addition to product development, I also work on marketing/graphic design including catalog layout, photoshoot planning and management, and fashion show coordination. I do have to say that I love my job and learn something new everyday. I work with a great team of 3 other designers and while we work very hard, we have a lot of fun and all love what we do.
Enjoy a peek into my life as a fashion designer!
XXOO Heidi B