Designing Clothes

Not all leading fashion designers went to a design school to learn about designing clothes. To design clothes it is not necessary to have any fancy college degree as long as you have oodles of talent, fashion sense, a vision and the perseverance to translate your vision into beautiful designs. If you are a Project Runway fan and hope to own your own fashion label, then you should start designing clothes for yourself. Here we will discuss how to design clothes that are wearable and also fashionable.

Designing Your Own Clothes

The most important skills for being a good fashion designer are not sewing and pattern making. These are of course important, but the most vital skill is to know how to sketch. If you cannot sketch well, it is impossible to explain the idea of a design to your seamstress. A good idea is as good as how it translates into the sketch. Anybody can follow directions from pre made pattern and create a dress, but to create and design your own dress takes a lot of effort and skill. So the first pre requisite to designing clothes is to have good sketching techniques and skill. The sketch need not be very detailed, but another person should be able to understand your design and the proportions need to be correct.

Once you have mastered the art of making proportionate sketches for designing clothes, the next stage is to develop an idea for your design. You can have an idea for a design of a dress or blouse from something that you have seen in the streets, a beautiful structure, a picture or just about anything. Sometimes an idea just pops into your head and you are ready to sketch at an instant. Sometimes you might just stare at a blank piece of paper and come up with nothing. The best way to find an idea for design is to take inspiration from nature. Look all around you and try to see things from a designer's perspective. Sometimes it helps to take a lot of pictures of random objects that inspire you. Later you can review the pictures and take inspiration from a particular picture. Fashion designers often find fashion design ideas in the most unlikely places, from the ripples in a pond to the petals of a flower. So, it always pays to keep your eyes open. Who knows what you might be inspired from to design clothes.

Once you have a good design idea and have successfully sketched it, you need to think about your fabric selection. Selecting fabrics is one of the most important steps in designing clothes, since the right fabric is crucial for the success of your design. If you have designed a highly structure dress with origami detailing then you will need a stiff fabric like silk dupioni, crinoline and organza for its construction. If you try to construct this dress with satin or chiffon, the dress will of course not look good. So selecting the proper fabric is one of the most important lessons in designing clothes. Also remember that the color choices that you make for making a garment, will give you a different look in different fabrics. If you choose a pale sea green for your dress in satin fabric, it will have a different intensity of color than in cotton or georgette. Once you have all the fabrics and embellishments like lace, buttons and zippers, you can go ahead and explain how to make the dress to a good seamstress.

This was all about designing clothes. There are many software for designing clothes that are available at a low cost. You can use this software to design your own clothes online. The best way to start making clothes is by designing baby clothes. This requires less fabric and also gives you greater flexibility in terms of design. Designing clothes comes with a learning curve and with practice you can design the most beautiful clothes.