Ask Fashion Girl

Dear Abbie

It's great to hear that you're interested in Fashion Merchandising! It's a terrific field. There are different careers within the area of Fashion Merchandising that can take you in many different directions. At FIDM, we actually have two Fashion Merchandising majors: Merchandise Marketing and Merchandise Product Development. A Merchandise Marketer can be involved with the operations of a store, as a Buyer for a store or chain of stores, in representing clothing manufacturers to stores who want to buy from them, or in helping to predict trends. A Merchandise Product Developer develops clothes and accessories for a specific market, such as"teens,"or"moms-to-be."She or he takes the trends and translates them into great wearables.

Each Merchandising job is different, of course, and different qualifications are called for. Duties at one company might include trend research (what's going to be in in a year), line development (coming up with new items for a line of clothing), and working on line sheets (paperwork which contains style numbers, simple sketches, size ranges, colors, etc.) Another company might be looking for someone who is very"detail-oriented,"with visual presentation skills, fashion sense, and color sense. Most will ask that you are skilled in Microsoft Word and Excel, and have good organizational, verbal, and communications skills.

To get there, working in a store is a great start. Also constantly shopping, reading fashion magazines, watching all the style shows on TV, and visiting fashion websites such as style.com and luxuryfashion.com. When you're ready for fashion college, FIDM is here to give you the skills and training you'll need to succeed in this awesome industry.

So you see, you can start now on the path to becoming a Merchandise Marketer or a Merchandise Product Developer. So go for it!

Sincerely, Fashion Girl