Fashion design is about much more than sketching clothing on paper. One of your primary objectives in fashion design school will be to develop design concepts, which means developing a cohesive collection or portfolio. For example, you will learn to use a color palette or certain patterns, textures and cuts across a collection. Another goal is to learn hands-on skills like cutting, sewing and draping fabric, to take your ideas from two-dimensional to three-dimensional.
In fashion design school, you'll learn how to conduct both market research and historical research. A successful designer is aware of his market demographics and buying patterns. You will also develop a comprehensive understanding of fashion history, art history and even world history so you can achieve the goal of understanding how trends in fashion are related to one another, trends in art and the world at large. You will also learn how to predict trends.
A good fashion design program will teach you how to use cutting-edge software in your designs, which can be used to virtually model clothing and see how certain fabrics and cuts will look in real life. You will also learn how to use computer software to help you create presentation boards and portfolios.
Fashion is an art, but it is also a business, which is why one of the objectives of fashion design school is to teach you effective business skills. These include working on a team of fellow designers, expressing ideas using proper fashion terminology, offering constructive criticism, pitching ideas and verbal communication. If you're looking for a job in fashion merchandising, your goals should include developing products to target particular demographics and designing a retail floor.