You and the Fashion Runways of Milan

By Wendy Croix
Learning & Life Columnist

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You subscribe to Women's Wear Daily. You haunt the newsstand, waiting for each month's issue of Italian Vogue. You've watched all the episodes of Project Runway and committed the advice of Heidi Klum and Michael Kors to memory. Face it. You're hooked on fashion.

First Stop Parsons School of Design?

Maybe you'll start your journey at a top fashion school, getting your degree at Parsons School of Design like Donna Karan or Fashion Institute of Technology like Calvin Klein. Fashion degrees come in the two- and four-year varieties.

If you yearn to be one of the 15,000 designers that currently works in fashion, you'll need an education although not necessarily a degree. Nicolas Ghesquiére, now a designer for Balenciaga, got his fashion know-how on the job as an assistant at Jean-Paul Gaultier. Vera Wang has no formal design training.

Getting a Manolo in the Door

Look at great designers and you'll see that many roads lead to Milan. With only two years as an assistant under his belt, entrepreneurial designer Calvin Klein struck out on his own. Australian designer Collette Dinnigan, a favorite of Charlize Theron and Naomi Watts, began her fashion career working for the Costume Department of the Australian Broadcasting Commission in Sydney. Kate Spade arrived in New York with $2 and a degree from Arizona State, which she parlayed into a handbag empire by way of a temp job at Mademoiselle.

Runway to Riches?

In the U.S., young designers can struggle financially while they're getting established. Remember Kate Spade's $2? She's worth considerably more than that now. Median annual earnings for fashion designers were $51,290 in 2002. The best can reach six figure salaries. In the high stakes gamble of high fashion, it's where you finish - not where you start.

Catching the Eye of the Rich and Famous

Before your favorite models strut your fashions past Sofia Coppola and Chloë Sevigny, the Hilton sisters and P. Diddy, the rich and famous consumers of haute couture, you'll have to find a way to get noticed. Fortunately, design schools hold shows, competitions, and benefits. Good schools mean good contacts. Contribute your designs to charity auctions, and you'll make your own magic. Or you can try that twenty-first century door-opener called reality TV.

Fast-Paced and High Pressure

Is the life of a high fashion professional for you? Throw away the time card and forget the forty-hour work week. Professions aren't jobs; they're obsessions. Fashion design is a highly competitive, trend-driven field in which, in the immortal words of Bill Blass, "You're only as good as your last collection." Well, isn't obsession with fashion what keeps you buying Italian Vogue?

Industrial Strength

Parsons offers a course called Lifestyle Marketing Strategies to help its fashion designers explore "various lifestyle design options that can be potentially targeted to high-end luxury consumers." By contrast, Tom Ford, creative guru of Gucci and YSL, credits his extraordinary success to his "mass-market tastes." Like biz-whiz designers Diane von Furstenberg and Calvin Klein, Ford and the Parsons School demolish the once-sacred wall between fashion merchandising and fashion design.

Fashion Your Designer's Life

Go ahead! Use that classic technique made popular by motivational guru Barbara Sher, and imagine a day in your life as a fashion designer. Are you up at dawn, putting the finishing touches on your fall collection or hurrying to the studio to do a celebrity fitting? Can you see famous people wearing your designs? Don't forget to hop on that plane for Milan to see your ideas walking down the runway. Can you hear the applause?

Sources

Collette Dinnegan. http://www.collettedinnigan.com.au (April 20, 2005)
"Designers" Occupational Outlook Handbook. Bureau of Labor Statistics. http://www.bls.gov (April 20, 2005)
"Designers A to Z." http://fashion.about.com (April 20, 2005)
Kate Spade. http://www.katespade.com (April 20, 2005)
Parsons School of Design http://www.parsons.edu (April 20, 2005)

About the Author
Wendy Croix, Ph.D. is a freelance writer, cultural critic and university professor. In her twenty years as a professional educator, Wendy has guided hundreds of students toward the careers of their dreams.

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