Lesson 2: Fashion Design Process

Fashion croquis

What is fashion croquis?

• Croquis drawing is the quick sketch of a live model.The word croquis comes from French and means simply "sketch".
• In fashion, the term refers to a fast sketch of a figure, typically nine heads tall as this is often the accepted proportions for fashion illustration, with a loose drawing of the clothes that are being designed. Often an outsized number of croquis drawings are going to be created for one finished look, which is fully drawn and finished.
• Croquis drawings are minimalist in style and serve as a blank canvas for drawing clothing.Fashion croquis sketches are less about the figure drawing and more about the garment. For example, these sketches usually don't include detailed faces, feet, or hands. Fashion illustrations can be added to a croquis drawing to convey texture, color, and accessories after the design concept is solidified.

What Is the Purpose of Croquis Drawings?

Croquis sketches outline the technical elements of a garment, including:

• Fit
• Shape
• Sleeve length
• Overall length
• Placement of darts and seams
• These detailed fashion sketches communicate the planning to pattern makers, who can then create a prototype from the croquis.

A croquis template can also be used as a blueprint for different designs within a collection of clothing. For example, fashion designer Marc Jacobs uses the same croquis template throughout a season to give pattern makers a sense of how different garments are supposed to be structured for a specific silhouette. This continuity between croquis sketches helps pattern makers to understand the width, height, and shape of garments in comparison to one another.

Textile Designer Vs Fashion Designer

Textile Designer:

Textile design is actually the method of making designs for woven, knitted or printed fabrics or surface ornamented fabrics. Textile designers are involved the assembly of those designs, which are used, sometimes repetitively, in clothing and interior decor items.

In other words, textile design may be a process from the staple into finished product.

Fiber, yarn and finishes are the key elements to be considered during the textile design procedure.

Overview of textile design:

Textile designing may be a creative field that has fashion design, carpet manufacturing and the other cloth-related field. Textile design fulfills a spread of purposes in our lives. For example, our clothing, carpets, drapes, towels, and rugs are all a results of textile design.

These examples illustrate the importance of textiles in our daily lives. The creations of textiles aren't only important for his or her use, but also for the role they play within the apparel industry . Textile designers have the power to inspire collections, trends, and designs . The textile industry, while being an ingenious kind , may be a very business savvy industry.

Textile designers marry an ingenious vision of what a finished textile will appear as if with a deep understanding of the technical aspects of production and therefore the properties of fiber, yarn, and dyes.

Fashion designer:

A fashion designer is a creative individual dedicated to the creation of garment or series of garment and accessories. Fashion designer typically sketch concept drawing of pieces as well as creating different boards (inspiration boards) containing bits and pieces of color, fabric and texture, that will help to guide the overall design concept.

Once the designer has determined all the collection pattern-making is the next step of the design process. The pattern is that the template from which the parts of a garment are traced onto fabric before being cut and assembled. To create physical samples and create pattern and sew pieces together they hire pattern maker or seamstress.

Differences & Similarities between a fashion designer and textile designer:

A textile designer creates patterns, designs for cloth and develops differing types of cloth . They also do embellishment of fabrics. It all starts from the very raw form in selecting the yarn, color of the yarn and the dyes for making the new fabric. Fashion designers use the ultimate product from the textile designers to develop new clothes with new designs. They imagine designs put it on paper and add the specified color then they choose a cloth which will best suit the form of the new design and make the clothes.

• Unit of Construction: the essential difference in fashion design and textile design is within the unit on which each works. While fashion design is about the finished product, i.e. the construction of fabric and garments, textile design starts with the smallest denominator – the yarn, its treatments & techniques and the weaves. In short, the textile designer creates the raw material for fashion designers which are widely used in Fashion Designing Courses. 
• Approach: While both require creativity and an in-depth understanding of their respective fields, they can and do work in coordination to achieve head turning results. What we see on ramps and campaigns is a culmination of their joint work. This works two ways; the fashion designer can get textiles created to suit their requirement, or they can be inspired by some great work by a textile designer and work around that.
• Application: Fashion design is the part of design that lends you that confidence to walk out of a door feeling like a million dollars with the right construction and finish. In Fashion Designing Institutes its taught that fashion is about garments – from those for kids to those for men and women, and also, with some specialization, accessories. When it comes to textile design, the applications go beyond the garment industry. The textiles can be designed for fashion garments, home furnishings, art, theater and cinema and a host of other places where the use of fabric is conceivable.
• Techniques: From minimal draping, to sewing in details to embroidering, appliqueing and a host of other creative techniques, fashion design has at its disposal a variety of ways to enrich the end product, make it stand out and talk to its target audience and that’s perfectly what fashion designing college teaching these days.