Costume Illustrator

Job Description:

Your main role as a fashion illustrator is to convey fashion designs through a drawing. You will create these drawings based on your own designs or concepts developed by other fashion designers.

Salary: Fashion Illustrators in America make an average salary of $72,583 per year or $35 per hour. The top 10 percent makes over $102,000 per year, while the bottom 10 percent under $51,000 per year.

Occupational Outlook:

The employment of fashion designers is projected to grow by 3 percent from 2021 to 2031, slower than the average for all occupations.

Despite limited employment growth, about 2,300 openings for fashion designers are projected each year, on average, over the decade. Most of those openings are expected to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to different occupations or exit the labor force, such as retiring.

Educational Requirements:

Bachelor's Degree in Art and Design preferred; other majors might include fashion or illustration.

PARSONS SCHOOL OF DESIGN

Address: 66 West 12th Street

Website: https://www.newschool.edu/parsons/fashion-design-certificate/

Information on the Major: Master of Arts (MA)

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS

Address: 1155 Union Circle

Website: https://www.unt.edu/academics/undergrad/fashion-design

Information on the Major: Fashion Design

UNIversity of Kentucky

Address: 318 Erikson Hall

Website: https://www.uky.edu/

Information on the Major: Merchandising, Apparel & Textiles.

Soft Skills, Characteristics, and/or Abilities Need For This Career:

To become a fashion illustrator, you need talent for drawing by hand or on computerized design (CAD) software. A sense of color, texture, visual perspective, lines and shading are important, as are personal style and creativity. Also, you need to understand fashion design and merchandising.

Software Knowledge Needed For This Career:

The most common hard skill for a fashion illustrator is sketching. 46.3% of fashion illustrators have this skill on their resume.
The second most common hard skill for a fashion illustrator is adobe photoshop appearing on 27.7% of resumes. The third most common is trend research on 7.1% of resumes.
Three common soft skills for a fashion illustrator are business skills, customer service skills, and dexterity.

Pros and Cons to Choosing This Career

Pros (Positives to this Career)

Can express your creativity daily
May work for major fashion designers
Many people may wear apparel made from your own designs

Cons (Negatives to this Career)

May work long hours
Job market is competitive
Meeting tight production deadlines can be stressful

Typical Working Conditions For This Career:

The environment for a fashion illustrator can be quite stressful at times. As they work with a wide array of different people to understand the need and fulfill the requirements, this can create stress amongst differing points of view. Additionally, there is often a need to work within a tight deadline and to potentially switch things up and modify them up until the last minute. Therefore it’s imperative that fashion illustrators be able to work well under stress and work well with many different personality types. The job can be quite fulfilling when they get to see their work at play, and it may involve a great deal of creativity that those within graphic design love to utilize.