Career: Fashion Designers

If you spend endless hours poring through fashion magazines or putting together your own new looks, you may want to consider a career in fashion design.

Using their flair for color and style, designers create trendy new fashions as well as practical garments, such as sportswear.

Fashion design is also a labor of love, requiring long hours and little chance of superstardom -- but for many, the work itself is the reward

Fashion designers use flair and know-how to create everything from hospital uniforms to the eye-popping outfits worn by rock stars and models.

“Fashion is architecture.”

Are You Ready To...?

* Choose fabrics

* Attend fashion shows

* Collaborate with a team

* Keep up with trends

* Work hard to build a career and keep it

* Invent new designs

It Helps to Be...

Full of drive and ambition: the glamorous allure of the fashion world draws a lot of competition. You’ll also need to have the talent and the artistic vision to back it up.

Make High School Count

* Study art. It will help you develop the eye for color, design, and proportion that you’ll need.

* Learn how to sew.

* Sharpen your math skills: measurement and proportion are fundamental to good design.

* Try your hand at costuming by working on the school play.

Did You Know?

* Fashion came into its own when Elias Howe invented the sewing machine in 1846, making it possible to reproduce garments cheaply and rapidly.