Guide to Fashion Sketches

FASHION - The intense competition in the fashion industry makes it important for any fashion designer to showcase the designs to a larger audience. This can be done by creating fashion sketches and displaying them on the Internet.

The sketches give an insight to the fashion fraternity and also to the common audience on the concept behind a particular fashion design. It is a way of communicating the theme to the people associated with the apparel industry. Hence, they are extremely important for any fashion designer.

Fashion sketches are illustrations made by professional artists and designed in a way that they can be easily displayed on the Internet. They portray the true creative genius of the designer. These can be considered a blue print of the final product.

The perfection in making sketches is a prerequisite as they serve as the main marketing tool of the fashion professionals. The sketches reflect trends and the value added features of the design. They can also be used to evaluate the various patters used by different designers.

Fashion sketches are important, since they are the preliminary designs that have to be taken to the different apparel manufacturers in the market. The sketches are then used to select the different fabric samples from the wide range on offer.

Computers are increasingly being used for the purpose of making fashion design sketches. Several software are now available that assist the designers in making the drawings. While some still prefer the traditional hand-drawn sketches, others choose to opt for the speed and convenience of computer-aided designing. Hand-drawn sketches can also be fed into the computer with the help of a scanner.

The art of making fashion design sketches is important for creating a niche in the highly competitive fashion industry. Fashion designers can make their presence felt only if their sketches are different and original. Good quality sketches are the only means of establishing a firm foothold in the fashion industry.

Is Fashion Design an Art Form?

The question of what constitutes "Art" with a capital T has been around for a long time. People pretty much agree that making a good cup of coffee is not an art form but there is still a lot of dissent about certain modes of expression like writing, movie making and fashion.

There is the idea that fashion cannot be an art because it evolved from sewing and tailoring which is a craft even though tailoring has been referred to as "architecture" and the draping of fabric across the body as being "sculptural".

Many designers make references to art and artistic theories and concepts in their work yet are nevertheless relegated to the ranks of the frivolous where haute couture is viewed as the fetish of the financially well-to-do.

And once haute couture and runway collections have been watered down for consumption by the general public then they are seen as nothing more than financial commodities and functional apparel in the marketplace.

Another reason why fashion is not considered to be art is because, as with film making, a number of people performing different functions take part in the creation of a garment, such as the designer, fabric producer, pattern cutter and seamstress to name but a few.

Because designers often don't work alone to produce a garment, they don't fit with the traditional view of the artist as a solitary genius and are therefore not considered artists even though their vision of what the garment will look like is their own.

In short, there is no clear-cut answer as to whether fashion is Art or not because there are so many ways to interpret and use an individual garment. It can be seen as protection from the elements, an expression of belonging to a particular socio-cultural group, as a personal form of expression when it is worn, or in its purest sense, as the embodiment of the vision of its creator, the designer.

Because fashion is so fluid and open to interpretation, it fits in with the theories of many disciplines and forms of expression, of which Art is only one.