A year ago, I decided to apply to fashion school after I graduated from college but that didn’t go as planned…

Fashion school was something I wanted back in high school but because of my parents I decided to go to a 4 year university and majored in business. After I graduated, I entered the work force and started to feel depressed knowing that this isn’t the job I wanted. I want to be in a creative position so I applied to FIDM.

I applied, I got in, but I didn’t end up going. In the final stages I realize that I couldn’t keep a full time job while attending school and there was no way I could afford to pay for tuition (or at least partially and get a small loan) if I didn’t have this full time job. I spent another year trying to find out what I want to do; I still don’t know yet but I do know that I’m still very much interested in fashion design. It took me very long to come to this conclusion but it’s never too late.

I decided to learn what I can about fashion design on my own and see where it’ll lead me.

I bought (and received) a few books and even a dress form this past week to get started; I spent the whole week just reading after work. Check out some of the books below:

Fashion Design Course: A Practical Guide for Aspiring Fashion Designers by Steven Faerm is more of a course book. It contains an overview of the fashion design process and the industry. I got pretty far into the book but haven’t done any of the assignments listed in there yet.

The other book I bought was the Couture Sewing Techniques by Claire B. Shaeffer. It’s a book about Haute Couture and the techniques to improve your sewing skills. I only started reading a few pages of this book but it seems to be a useful book.

Fashion Illustration: Inspiration and Technique Anna Kiper is my favorite book so far. It’s not a step by step tutorial on drawing the fashion figure but it contains very useful tips to create beautiful illustrations. I love all the drawings in this book and have been using it as a reference to practice drawing the fashion figure.

The book I had anticipated the most is Draping: The Complete Course by Karolyn Kiisel. It is a larger book with lots of helpful pictures showing the step by step process to successfully draping a dress form. There were lots of different examples of how to drape the dress form but I didn’t have time to try any of them yet 😦

The largest order I had this week was the dress form. I had done research and a lot of them were a bit out of my budget. I decided to order the cheapest one I could find online and it was not disappointing. It’s a fully pinnable dress form that came in my size. I can’t wait to put this to use!

I’m very excited to finish these books and start working on some pieces. I will be updating on my progress again soon.

Thanks for reading 🙂

—Vicky T.