The different types of fashion courses include those related to designing, sewing, styling and merchandising. Designers and dressmakers alike need to take classes in pattern making and garment construction. Stylists as well as textile and clothing designers need courses in understanding different fabrics and how colors work with skin tones. Those who work on the buying and selling side of the industry typically take a wide range of fashion business courses.
Fashion business courses include quality control, costing, marketing and accounting. Skills such as being able to analyze the quality of different fabrics are important for all workers in the fashion industry. Buyers and sellers look for quality sewn garments with a flattering fit and cut. Understanding garment construction is one of the most crucial fashion courses for designers, dressmakers, merchandisers, buyers and stylists. If a piece is well-designed, but lacks efficient sewing or quality materials, it's not considered a quality garment.
Merchandising courses include e-commerce as well as traditional store options. A knowledge of retailing as well as how to forecast what customers want are main goals of merchandising fashion courses. Buyers and stylists must also be aware of the wants and needs of customers as well as how to market products to reach the target group at which the clothing is directed.
Courses that deal with color and pattern are important to everyone in the fashion industry. While creative, cutting edge garments that may be controversial in their appeal are often tolerable in the fashion world, taste is also a mainstay. The ability to nderstand trends as well as tasteful relationships between pattern and color is taught in fashion courses on many levels. Both entry-level and more senior workers in the fashion industry are expected to have sophisticated levels of taste.
Garment construction fashion courses usually take place in classrooms that have sewing machines as well as dressmaking dummies, or mannequins. Typically, fashion students will take these sewing courses after first learning pattern-making skills and sketching. Pattern-making classes may teach students how to create fashion patterns from paper as well as with computer software.
Sketching courses in fashion involve being able to draw all types of clothing on figures. Anyone who has ever flipped through one of those large sewing pattern books at a fabric store is likely to have seen the cartoon-like, but ultra-elegant style common to fashion sketching. Designers, dressmakers and pattern makers often take sketching fashion courses.