All you want to know on Fashion Designing Course and the Industry

What are the new courses available after Plus Two??....Have been writing about many courses in this series. This time let us know about Fashion Designing.

Aarathi Swaminathan who works in this industry for more than 10 years have answered to our questions. Aarathi is a multi dimensional person. Apart from her career, she is a marathon runner, cyclist and a swimmer. Her passion extends to photography too.

Over to Aarathi to know more about the Fashion Designing course and the industry:

If an youngster wants to join a course on Fashion designing after +2, what he/ she shall do?

He/She should look up for individual college/university entrance exams. The application form would be issued from the month of September of the previous year of He/she completing +2 (Eg. +2 board exam in March 2017 Application form will be issued September 2016)

How can one choose fashion designing as a career after completing any degree? Can some one who has completed Bsc or B Com can chose this? 

Answer is Simple Yes, if you have interest in creativeness and fashion you are most eligible to study further.

There are course like MSc, PG Diploma in Fashion designing which you can take up with any basic UG degree.

Which are the best colleges to do fashion designing in Chennai? Please share some good colleges in other parts of Tamil nadu and India also.

There is a huge list of colleges which offer Fashion designing as a course.

No. 1 Being NIFT (Nation Institute of Fashion technology) in India. Followed by Pearl Academy. Each of the University and college affiliated with them also offer course. Eg. Madras university, Bharathiyar University, Bharathidasan University etc.

What about the fees structure in different colleges....

Each college has its own fees structure based on college being Private or Government affiliated.

But in general the fee structure is slightly more when compared to other courses.

Tell us about the training one gets during the course and after the course. 

During your course of time all the basics of Fashion designing would be thought from Designing, pattern making, stitching and many more. But the real learning would be when you step into the industry for their internship and job. Fashion being a industry where there is constant change so the best learning is during your Job.

How do generally people chose Fashion designing as a career? Do they chose out of passion or they chose it as an alternate option since they could not get engineering or some other course they like?

People take fashion purely out of passion. As this being allied subject not many are aware of a program like this and it's mostly people with creative background and what to do something out of the box decide to take up these courses.

There is an assumption that more girls choose fashion designing? Is it true? Or both men and women chose this as a career equally? 

It's a false assumption I would say. There are many boys who decide to take us these course and the industry welcome both gender equally for job.

Please tell about the employment opportunities - both for freshers and experienced people.

There are huge opportunity as this market is pick up because of lot of online marketing and etc. Merchandiser are someone who are always in the demand throughout the year and throughout the globe.

Similar to fashion designer which many people know, what are other positions/ opportunities are there in the industry? What should one study for that?

Basically the fashion industry can be split into 3 parts

1. Designer module

2. Manufacturer module

3. Retail module

1. Designer module- you work a design for a private firm or you start your own design house and create your own cloths line. Eg. Ritu Kumar, Manish Malhotra 

2. Manufacturer module- you work for a product house or a factory set up. You have job opportunity as a designer in Product development team, you can be a merchandiser, you can get into sourcing, fabric , trims, production planning and many more.

3. Retail module- again you can get into front end Retail or Back end Retail. 

These are the numerous opportunities a person get just by studying fashion designing.

What is the salary range for freshers and people with experience.

It depends from which college he/she is passing out and also based on individual candidate capacity and potentially. 

I guess starting your own business in fashion designing is a great option. What are the opportunities and scope for being on your own? After how many years one can start his own business? What is the probability of success for start ups?

If he/she has a business background (Family) or interest in Business then may be immediately after they pass out of college if someone is ready to fund the business. Other it depends on what kind of business they want to start as this Industry is diverse in terms of business modules.

Tell us about your journey: How you chose this course and what you studied....

I wanted to do something out of the box from rest of the family members and being a creative person decided to take up fashion designing. I did my UG BSc in Fashion Technology and costume designing from Trichy. Purely into designing. Being an aspiring entrepreneurs I wanted to know the business in all dimensions and decided to pursue my PGD from Pearl Academy, Chennai in Fashion Merchandising. Worked in all business formed and have about close to 10 years of experience now I'm looking forward to start my own business very soon. I have taken all my failure in my stride and looked at the positive side and only focused on the learning. I have had high and low in my career front but it had been a great experience when I sit in a senior designation now in my organization.

Opportunities abroad for those who completed this course? In which countries do they have scope?

All European countries and USA has great opportunity.

How is the industry now? 

Domestic is doing very well and the market is growing with all online retail.

How is the work culture and stress level in this industry?

A tough question to Answer in terms of stress as it's individual perspective. For me I always took stress as a learning experience. But in general this industry is little disorganized and each company has its own set of systems and procedures and hence people find it difficult to adopt and perform. But for people who look at it as a challenge with come out with flying colors.

 Any final points/ inputs for those who want to enter this industry.

Welcome to the world of Fashion there is lot to experience and know what goes in into a cloths that you wear... All the best!!