For an industry as big as fashion, it is quite obvious to get confused about what fashion course to opt for–Fashion design or Fashion Technology. Cannot determine which one will be the best option? To help you deal successfully with this difficult situation, this article will address the variations between these two fields. In this way, you will be able to conclude which of the two fits the best for you.
What Is Fashion Design?
Fashion Design is the form of art committed to the creation of clothing and other lifestyle accessories. This field is assumed to have begun in the 19th century with Charles Frederick Worth as he was the very first designer to label sewn into the garments that he created. And after its origination, fashion design has continued to transform, up to now, modern design is segregated into three primary categories: haute couture, mass market, and ready-to-wear.
- Haute Couture, a French word that actively demonstrates “high fashion”. It is a collection dedicated to a certain purchaser who demands complete custom-fitted clothing. Collections assembled by hand, made from high quality, expensive and unfamiliar fabric and with utmost attention to detail.
- Simultaneously, mass-market fashion is just the opposite of haute couture. Mass-market collections are dedicated to a wide range of customers and are generally created with cheaper fabrics and easy production techniques.
- Ready-to-wear collections are standardized sizes, signifies the factory-made clothing, not custom made and are suitable for a large production run and not for individual customers to guarantee particularity, making them more costly to purchase.
Fashion designers design clothes, but designers do a lot apart from just designing. With the change in cultural and social attitudes, fashion also changes and the designs as well.
Fashion designers constantly conduct research on fashion drifts and decode these trends for their onlookers. Along with aesthetically pleasing when creating clothes, designers have to keep in mind that clothes are functional as well.
- Ambitious fashion designers can take a certificate program or an associate’s degree. The former takes about one year of education while the latter takes about two years. In both the degrees students get to learn fundamental and technical skills like tailoring, sewing and primary fashion principles.
- Having said that, students can also take up a bachelor’s degree, which takes four years to complete.
- And to learn and grow as a designer, they can choose a master’s degree or a doctorate. The education in a bachelor’s degree, a master’s and a doctorate is a much more in-depth study than a certificate program or an associate’s degree.
Here is the list that fashion design schools all teach their students:
- Art and fashion history
- Collection and concept development
- Computer-aided fashion design
- Costume design
- Digital colour and design theory
- Draping
- Fashion illustration
- Fashion Merchandising
- Fashion sketching
- Management
- Patternmaking
- Computer Patternmaking
- Portfolio preparation
- Principles of design
- Professional practices
- Sewing and garment construction
- Studio courses
- Textiles and fabrics
- Portfolio
Fashion Designing is the art of implementing design, aesthetics and natural beauty to attires and its accessories. Possible jobs, fashion design degree holders can attain are:
- Clothing designers
- Footwear designers
- Accessory designers
- Costume designers
What Is Fashion Technology?
Fashion technology is firmly related to fashion design. It is narrated as the field that essentially focuses on the learning of fabric types and stability. It deals with assessing various kinds of fabric and then selecting the appropriate fabric for the end product.
Both fashion technology and fashion design have similarities, especially in the study of design and aesthetics with a more technical twist.
Fashion technologists are often known as clothing or textile technologists, which means, work with fabrics. Both artificial and natural fibres are studied but not just limited to leather, fur, metals and plastics
They will also document fabrics or textiles that are fit for a cause and accomplish quality control tests. Clothing technologists mainly work on the growth of products, enhancing production efficiency and quality, and also building parallel connections with those associated with the production process.
list of few regular assignments that fashion technologists do:
- Establishing man-made fibres and quality determining natural fibres
- Producing non-woven materials
- Spinning fibres into yarn and knitting or weaving yarn into fabrics
- Identifying the latest fabric trends, enlargements, and alterations
- Overseeing the dyeing, printing and finishing processes
- Ensuring quality in sections like strength, durability, colour fastness and water and chemical resistance
- Connecting with designers and modifying designs to suit production methods
- Making and sizing pre-production garments
- Sourcing fabrics and accessories
- Undertaking quality assessments of materials and of the final product
- Answering product related questions, also complaints from wholesalers and customers
- Experimenting with ways to find new yarns
- Developing chemicals to make fabrics more waterproof, flame-resistant and shrink resistant
Fashion technology trades in with a bunch of technical features of fashion. Just like fashion design, fashion technology also comes with various programs. This field also provides a certificate program, an associate’s degree, a bachelor’s, a master’s and a doctorate. The syllabus for fashion technology varies from school to school.
Here is the list of subjects:
- Apparel Production Planning and Control
- Fabric Manufacturing
- Fashion Illustration
- Garment Construction
- Industrial Engineering in Apparel Industry
- Design Concepts
- Fashion Accessories and Costumes
- Fashion Model Drawing
- Textiles
- Knitting Technology
Fashion technology’s focal point is the study of fabric types and persistence. It balances both, the manufacturing procedures and includes a broad use of technology in clothing production. Unlike fashion design which is more creative and artistic in nature, the aspect of fashion technology is technical in nature. It requires the specialization of Apparel manufacturing and Information technology. Possible jobs that fashion technology degree holders can secure are:
- Fashion designers
- Fashion merchandisers
- Technical designers
- Fashion coordinators
- Quality control managers
To sum up, everything that has been stated so far, both fashion design and fashion technology has few similarities and differences as well. However, it completely depends upon the choice you make. The choice should depend on your preferences and goals. Whether you want to be more creative and inventive or more technical, totally depends upon your passion. No matter what you choose in the end both the fields are great to fulfil your dreams as they are tagged under the same roof of the fashion industry.
