Fashion Talent Is About More Than One Skill

Fashion talent does not emerge from one skill alone. Knowing how to sketch, sew, style, shoot and construct a dress is a point of entry into fashion. However, contemporary fashion relies upon the cooperation of different creative professions.

It might not be immediately evident since the result of fashion production – the collection – seems to consist of finished items. In fact, the collection is created by multiple talents including designers, pattern cutters, textile experts, stylists, casting agents, photographers, producers, makeup artists, set designers and others.

Developing an awareness of this creative system might be just as important as cultivating a particular fashion talent.

Technical Expertise Is the First Step

The fashion industry still relies upon those individuals who know how things really work.

The designer has to know how to transform ideas into clothes, the pattern cutter affects proportions and construction, and the textile expert knows how a particular material behaves. The illustrator can communicate the idea before making physical samples.

These skills are quite different and being really good at one of them is highly valuable. But it is wrong to treat technical expertise as an independent entity.

For instance, fashion illustration must convey silhouette, material behavior, proportions and details in a way that is comprehensible to others. A stylist has to understand the clothes and, on top of that, how individual clothes interact with each other. A photographer has to think not only about clothing but also about lighting, composition, location and the person who wears it.

As collaboration develops, it becomes harder to separate the disciplines from each other.

Fashion Career Development Occurs Between Creative Disciplines

Not every person working in fashion develops a particular talent in order to perform the same job forever.

Creative skills can overlap. An individual who is interested in photography might eventually become a specialist in art direction. A designer can cultivate a deep understanding of visual presentation and styling. A beginner with garment construction skills can develop into a costume maker, bespoke tailor, textile developer or another specialist.

Digital media technologies have broadened the scope of overlapping skills. A small designer or rising creative talent can now participate in the process of creating a product, producing campaign imagery, planning the web presence and interacting with clients directly.

But that does not mean everybody should perform every job. Specialization remains extremely important due to the technical nature of some fashion jobs. What has changed is the importance of knowing how your own skills can be related to the rest.

Creative Direction Demonstrates the Connections between the Skills

The job of creative director offers a clear example.

At a big fashion house, fashion’s creative leadership goes beyond creating garments. The collections should be consistent with the existing identity while also offering new reasons for attention. Runway presentation, casting, campaign, accessories, visual communication and reinterpretation of historical heritage can become an integral part of the broader direction.

Recent fashion industry preoccupation with creative leaders makes the scope of responsibilities especially visible. Big houses like Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Balenciaga, etc. were entering new eras of creativity following changes in leadership, attracting enormous attention not just to the collections created by the new directors but also to their interpretation of the identity they inherited.

But this means that creative direction should not be confused with an individual doing every job in fashion. Even a very talented leader still needs a team capable of turning his or her vision into clothing, images, shows, objects and experiences.

Observation Skills Are Also Fashionable

Technical practice is not the only thing you need to learn.

People who want to develop fashion talent will find it beneficial to learn how to observe. A runway collection can be analyzed from the point of view of proportion and silhouette but also from such perspectives as casting, styling, music, location, movement and relations between individual outfits.

A campaign can be studied in a similar way. Why was a particular setting chosen? What role did the lighting play? Did the styling reinforce or deliberately challenge the collection? How does the imagery relate to the identity that the brand has developed in other places?

Such observation allows fashion consumption to be treated as creative study.

It also helps emerging talent realize that fashion rarely communicates through one element only. The jacket can be technically impressive but its meaning will be affected by the way it is worn, styled, photographed and shown together with other elements.

Collaboration Does Not Mean Generic Skill Set

Collaborating with different people does not mean having universal skills.

On the contrary, collaboration becomes more valuable when every individual has something recognizable to offer to the project. The unique visual language of the photographer, the exceptional technical skills of the pattern cutter, and the unusual perception of proportions from the stylist's side become unique contributions of the individual team members that the other members of the team do not have.

So the goal is not to become skilled in every fashion profession. The goal is to develop expertise while being aware of the environment in which it will be applied.

Emerging fashion talents should change the question from "What am I good at?" to "Where does what I am good at become useful?"

And this is an important difference. The fashion industry has many talents but much of the work done by fashion professionals is a collective effort. The garment, image, campaign, editorial or runway show is the final product. But there are people behind it who have developed the skills necessary for collaboration