How many garments are in a collection

The fashion industry is famously fickle, biased and often trend-driven, so it is vital to know how to design a commercially strong fashion collection that is cohesive and makes sense to the buyers. A commercially strong fashion collection essential regardless if you are selling direct to consumer, in person, in your own retail store, on your website, online platform like Etsy, or to wholesalers who are reselling in their stores.

A good, commercially successful collection is one that tells a story through product; where all the pieces work well together and merchandise easily. One of the main elements a good collection must have is a signature style that though it may evolve over time, it should be from the start consistently present and recognizable. Your signature style is what will set you apart from other designers and make you instantly recognizable.

It can be based on one or more of the following: certain use of colour, shapes, patterns e. How you use these signature elements in the process of telling a story through product is what creates your design aesthetic. Pro tip: Finding, defining and fine-tuning your signature design style is imperative. It will allow you to interpret common and often coincidently shared influences in your own unique way.

We often think of designer collections as a selection of curated series of pieces that can be worn together. It is quite common to start with a single product type business and over time add to it and expand it to a full multi-item collection business. It is less often seen and traditional to do it the other way around though.

If your budget allows, it would be great of you can have more than 12 pieces of course, as a larger collection will allow for better exposure and versatility throughout the collection. However, be mindful of the fact that depending on the product category you are in, this may translate into more individual pieces e. Would your designs be sold in a single colour choice or would you offer extra colourways to buyers? What often happens here that leads to disastrous consequences, later on, is this: younger and less experienced designers, in their quest to be noticed and have successful launch talk to other designers to get feedback on optimum collection size.

They look at perhaps style. If that sounds like you, stop now! Add to this colour options on offer, sizes and materials and the production minimums raw material suppliers and manufacturers require and the finance needed to fund it all.

At best you are looking at a manufacturing and logistics recipe for disaster. For instance, you might have a bag design that comes in 12 different colours. How do you decide what this item is? Others may think they have an amazing idea worth investing in and go for it.

Finally, you may be a One of a Kind type of designer and create a collection consisting of individual one-of-a-kind pieces. Here is a good example when the size of the collection may be much larger than the above examples due to the fact that usually these pieces are sold as seen and do not go into production. Often they are limited in colour choices and sizes.

In other words, being a one of a kind designer brand is a business where you rely on selling an inventory of stock already created upfront. Whereas the more established route to market is creating a sample collection from which orders are taken and fulfilled at a later date. And they started their careers pre-internet.

We live in a time of access, where rebuilding an engine or tailoring a t-shirt can be learned simply by watching a YouTube video. While Sarah owes a great deal of her success to learning professional skills in a classroom, much of her education was gained on the job, working in corporate retail.

Sarah is a huge advocate for spending a few years learning the ropes from other brands and designers. In this video, we'll teach you the ins and outs of the fashion industry and everything you need to know to start a clothing brand from scratch. Many institutions offer fashion design and small business programs in varying formats. If you have more drive than funds or time, there are a growing number of fast-track and online courses for fashion industry hopefuls.

As Sarah discovered, the world of fashion and the world of business have a lot more overlap than she expected. Starting a clothing line requires many of the same considerations as starting any business. How much does it cost to start?

When should you pursue capital for your startup? What outside help will you need to navigate legal, financial, production, and distribution aspects of the business? Where and how will you produce your garments? This guide is for those looking to design and develop their own clothing brand and collections. If you are interested in the fashion world but have no interest or skills in design, consider reselling by buying wholesale or trying dropshipping.

For those designing a clothing line from scratch, this is the point where you will decide what type of business you are looking to run. This will help you determine how much time, effort, and funding you will require upfront. Once you have a business idea for your clothing line, you may be able to fund it yourself and bootstrap as you go. However, you will need to invest upfront in equipment and large quantities of fabric to be cost-effective.

Other costs include shipping materials, fees for launching your site, and a marketing budget. In either case, expect to need thousands of dollars upfront. There are a few low budget entry points in the world of fashion, though, including consignment, dropshipping, and print on demand.

Hone in on your strengths and be true to your own design sensibilities. Fashion school will teach you the basics of making everything from undergarments to evening wear. While her line has a year-over-year consistency—design choices in her pieces that are unmistakably hers—Sarah is always watching trends. She says that the key is adapting those trends to your brand, personalizing them, and making them work for your customer.

Keeping her production tight and retaining control over design, Sarah was quickly able to pivot in the wake of the global pandemic, adding face masks in her signature prints. To get inspiration for your own idea, devour fashion publications, follow style influencers, and subscribe to fashion newsletters and podcasts to stay inspired and catch trends before they emerge. In the noisy world of fashion, consider finding niches or filling gaps in the industry like these inspiring founders:.

Building your fashion brand is an exercise in putting to paper your values, your mission, what you stand for, your story, and more. Creating brand guidelines will help to inform all of your business and branding decisions as you grow. They will dictate visual direction, website design, and marketing campaigns. They should dictate what you look for in a retail partner or a new hire.

Use social media to build a lifestyle around your brand: share your inspiration and process, inject your own personality, tell your story, and be deliberate with every post.

Sarah is an advocate of the sketchbook as one of the most important tools for a designer. Sarah says that fabric sourcing has a lot to do with who you know. Building a network in the industry can help you access contacts for fabric agents, wholesalers, and mills. When she lived in Toronto, she knew the local fabric market and used an agent to get access to fabrics from Japan. But even that route has pitfalls.

All of the local clothing lines are all using the same fabrics. When fabric from all over the world became easier to access online, Sarah began to find it difficult to source unique prints and materials, despite her contacts. Her solution: she began to design her own. For those just starting out, agents can be helpful, but Sarah suggests building personal networks and joining communities of designers. Start meeting others in the industry at local incubators, meetup groups, online communities, and live fashion networking events.

In the early days, you may not be producing volumes that warrant outside help, but as you scale, a manufacturing partner will let you free up time for other aspects of the business and design. There are a few exceptions. Growth, though, is generally dependent on outsourcing at least some of the work. She also outsources her dye runs to a factory. In Michigan, Detroit Denim produces clothing in its own manufacturing facility, where the founders are able to control the process—at scale.

Alternatively, combat loneliness and save money on equipment by seeking out co-working spaces, incubators, or shared studios. Well, here ends the design process of the fashion collection, but actually the process of the garments should be continued with the realization of prototypes and with the production.

Do you want to know more about this theme? Would you like to know what roles does a fashion designer play in the Fashion Industry? As a designer in the fashion industry, Below is a summary with the examples of the most outstanding activities that must be performed simultaneously…. This time, the Versace men's collection has a completely different appearance, his new look has been changed and renewed. Probably many will be thinking that this brand is risking to much with the completely change in the male's look it has held for so much time but in my view,….

This is definitely a good way to know trendy colors of…. Do you have any videos? I am going to use this with my Fashion Design students and a video would be awesome!

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If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again. Skip to content. Activities to be performed in order to create a fashion collection: I have decided to illustrate this theme using the first project I made in Italy, a fashion collection that I designed on a specialized course in fashion design in Target: Popular, medium, medium-high, high.

These are some examples of collections with different target types: Regarding the type of client: We must be clear from the beginning to whom we are going to sell our fashion collection. I recommend starting by identifying the average age of your customer, focusing on a maximum range of 5 to 10 years to be able to establish the most important details of this analysis, which are: Who are they?

Demographics such as gender, age, education and their personality characteristics, for example: are they friendly, outgoing, cheerful …? What is their job role? Company size, industry, and general job responsibilities. What is a day in their life like?