15 Tips to Become a Fashion Designer without a Degree

Attaining your dream of becoming a fashion designer doesn’t necessarily require having a formal bachelor’s degree. But being passionate, willing to learn, and staying focused can go a long way to help you in attaining that dream of becoming a fashion designer. Even though at some point, you might need a professional certification to move further, getting started can be as simple as just setting your mind to it and working towards your passion.

Before going in fully into “15 tips to become a fashion designer without a degree”, here are a few pieces of information to get acquainted with.

Table of Content

• What is Fashion Designing?
• Who is a Fashion Designer?
• How to Become a Fashion Designer

What is Fashion Designing?

Fashion design entails creating designs and aesthetics and having them on different types of clothing, and accessories such as shoes, jewellery, and handbags. It can at various periods and locations be influenced by culture, trends, and lifestyles.

However, fashion design also pulls from various disciplines in an academic field of study. These disciplines include technology, history, business, illustration, and so on. All these are what help fashion design be understandable and explorable. They are very essential in this field, and some of them can not be omitted for whatever reason.

Who is a Fashion Designer?

A fashion designer is someone who carries out the art of fashion designing. He or she is the one that creates designs and comes up with aesthetics for fashion design. A fashion designer creates clothing and accessories depending on their area of choice or specialization. Fashion designers create designs based on their creativity, it is this that prompts reactions from consumers. Which, if acceptable to them, can be used to create or serve a trend.

With the above, you already should know what you want to go into entails.

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How to Become a Fashion Designer

There are no two ways to the first step to attaining a goal in life. You have to acquire knowledge about your pursuit. Whatever you want to go into, be it fashion designing, or other things, you have to learn, unlearn, relearn, and even believe. This is what brings us to the following list.

Here are 15 tips on how to become a fashion designer without a degree:

• Be sure its what you want
• Learn more
• Pick a Niche
• Develop yourself in the area of your chosen specialization
• Access yourself
• Learn Business
• Get customers/clients
• Be physically, emotionally, financially and psychologically ready for the business you are about to start
• Identify the fashion need of your environment
• Be conversant with your customers
• Don’t rely on the things you can do already
• Connect with people of the same interest
• Let your competitors inspire you
• Be strategic
• Create a portfolio

1. Be sure its what you want

This is the first tip on how to become a fashion designer without a degree. Pursuing a career can be stressful and draining no doubt. But what pushes one most times is the burning passion one has for the pursuit, and, fashion designing is no different. So,  if you want to go into fashion designing, you must be sure you are passionate about it and that it is what you want. Going into fashion designing because of the juicy returns alone might not get you anywhere in the long run because you might end up giving up when it becomes challenging. So, be very sure of what you want.

2. Learn More

Being passionate and perhaps talented doesn’t mean you have enough knowledge to proceed. Learn more, and enrol for courses and tutorials if needed. You just have to do all it takes to acquire the knowledge, if not, you wouldn’t proceed no matter what. Also, note that having basic knowledge also requires learning more, so, continue learning, you can’t know it all. Build on what you already know and keep evolving in the fashion world. You can register to get a degree or go on an Internship or Apprenticeship. However, you should note this is a very important tip you must not omit if you want to become a fashion designer without a degree.

Learning fashion designing can be quite tasking, of course, so you have to be ready to learn a lot and never get tired. Even while learning, you shouldn’t be limited to just your tutorials, learn from other places too. Some other places to learn from include:

• Existing fashion designers: before you picked an interest in fashion designing, there are already people in the business. They have gathered experience, worked with a lot of people, learnt a lot, studied at different places, have unique styles and stories, and so on. Research on these people, learn from them too, read about their background, how they started, the challenges they faced and so on. Read a lot about their works too and how they came about some of their styles (if any gets your interest). All of these are a source of inspiration. And trust me, you need the inspiration to go far.
• Make Research: try as much as possible to be used to the internet, make research on new trends, read extensively and try to implement whatever you learn.
• Start early: if possible, start learning as early as possible. Once you discover your passion, push to be enrolled either in a school or as an apprentice. Fashion design is very wide and requires broad knowledge. When you start learning early at a young age, you tend to be able to gather a lot of experience early enough, being devoted and having more time for your craft. But because growing up comes with a lot of responsibilities sometimes, you might not have enough time to learn a lot as you would have when you were younger. That is why I would suggest starting early but either way, you can still start anytime. You can always achieve anything once you set your mind to it after all.

3. Pick a Niche

Fashion design is very wide no doubt, picking an area of specialization wouldn’t be a bad idea. Think of the niche of fashion design that interests you most and build on it. Although you might have to also consider other factors to decide, the subject of interest also matters. And you can also diversify, all depending on your diversity capabilities. Other factors to consider are the demand of your environmental market, the niche in which you have the most creativity, raw materials availability, capital, and so on.

4. Develop yourself in the area of your chosen specialization

Another important tip on how to become a fashion designer with a degree is choosing a niche. After choosing a niche, don’t relent, continue building yourself, learn, unlearn, and relearn. Take extra courses if need be and continue to practice. And don’t forget to always challenge yourself to do better no matter how good you think you already are.

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5. Access yourself

Just like in the academic field, you need to constantly access your progress. Be sure you are ready for the next level and that you are progressing. Make sure you keep improving and you don’t remain the same way you started a few months after. Take note of your lapses and work on them. Also, note that you have to work on your interpersonal relations with people as you would be constantly working with people. A bad personality can send people packing no matter how good you are.

6. Learn Business

Although you can become a fashion designer without a degree, you shouldn’t ignore learning other things that need to be learnt. As long as you are passionate about having a surviving career in fashion designing, you must be willing to learn how to run a business. Just like every other field, Business has its speciality too, you must be up to date, knowledgeable, smart, and active to stay in business. If not, the people who know about Business will outrun you. So, get to it, there’s a lot to learn; customer relations, running the business smoothly, and so on.

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7. Create a Portfolio

Creating a portfolio of your work is a style of marketing yourself and your work. This would be very useful especially when you are applying for jobs or internships. Make sure your portfolio includes your best works, details your skill, and speaks volumes of your creativity. Using a high-quality binder is also important so you don’t appear cheap.

Some of the things to include in your portfolio are:

• Your Resume,
• Sketches (Drawn or Photographed),
• Computer drawn designs,
• Mood or concept pages,
• Colour or textile presentation pages, and so on.

8. Get customers/clients

There’s no doubt some people might have picked interest in you during the course of learning and started giving you jobs. But you still have to go all out, meet new people, introduce yourself to them, and make them fall in love with your work. From there comes the referrals and contracts. Little by little, you keep growing.

9. Be physically, emotionally, financially and psychologically ready for the business you are about to start

Starting up a new vocation can be stressful and draining. You have to prepare yourself for the ups and downs because they would surely come. Just make sure it doesn’t meet you unawares. Nothing good comes easy, once you fall, you’ll rise again, just keep going.

10. Identify the fashion need of your environment

You can either consider the interest of your environment before choosing a niche or set up in an environment that has the same interest as yours if your immediate environment doesn’t. Either of these two options should definitely work for you.

11. Be conversant with your customers

As much as possible, be conversant with your customers, get feedback from them, and get them to share their ideas with you. They might have one or two things to tell you about where you can improve and even, what they would like from you. Listen to them and act on their words. That on its own is customer relationships and it also helps you improve.

12.  Don’t rely on the things you can do already

As stated in the “Learn More” section, you have to continually evolve, keep learning and don’t be far from keeping up with trends. That is the way to survive in this field. Make sure not to think you already know enough and you don’t need to be up to date, if you are not up to date, you will become outdated. So, keep evolving.

13. Connect with people of the same interest

You can’t be a highland of knowledge, connect with people in your field, there’s a lot you can learn from them. And also, there are a lot of upcoming you can impart too. Life is also about impartation.

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14. Let your competitors inspire you

Instead of having to give up, hate, or stereotype yourself negatively, be inspired to do better. Some of the people you think are going better than you also started somewhere. Just believe you can be better and work towards it, and then you will become better. Trust the process and stay focused.

15. Be strategic and creative

Be strategic about your career. Being strategic would get you far in your vocation. There are already a lot of other people in the same business as you, but once you are able to up your game, no stopping you. You can make use of your skills to match the market demands if your creativity is mindblowing enough. The fashion world welcomes varieties, unlike in some other fields. You can be unique and strategic in your uniqueness, when people see this, they sure would fall in love with you and your craft.

Conclusively, fashion design might be wide but it doesn’t mean you can’t pursue your passion. Learning might take a lot of time and sacrifice but with determination and focus, you’ll achieve your dream.